The BSNL board’s decision to put the tender for 93-mn GSM lines on hold has created a storm within the concerned establishments in the government. The equipment order given to Ericsson and Huawei has already been delayed for an year now. Corruption charges, irregularities, controversies, etc have been paralyzing BSNL’s ability to clear the tenders for equipment procurement over the last three years, crippling its ability to register any significant profit. It failed to do so particularly during the last three years when the mobile market in India recorded the highest growth globally. It affected the prospects of BSNL’s expansion activities during a high growth time. This has resulted the company sliding to fifth position now from numero uno position in mobile space in 2006. Bharti Airtel has assumed the coveted top position pushing BSNL downward, and even Tata Teleservices is also poised to overtake BSNL in mobile customers within the next couple of months.

On putting the tender on hold, BSNL’s executives maintain that ‘vested interests’ are at work behind the delays to ensure that the PSU losses its prominence in the country’s mobile space. Who are these vested interests? How these vested interests can play havoc if BSNL is strict in its procedures without compromising on the set procedures? It looks like a blame game to divert attention from the controversy.

BSNL has stated that it is putting the tender only on hold, but not cancelling the tender of halving it as suggested by one of the government representative in the BSNL board. All court cases on the tender have gone in its favour and even an ‘integrity panel’ set up with the permission of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) has cleared the BSNL of any wrongdoing in the past regarding this tender. It further stated that it will wait for the results of the latest probe by CVC before placing orders with successful bidders, Ericsson and Huawei. Hope BSNL emerges out of this controversy with a clean chit.

The BSNL move to put the tender on hold comes as the CVC has launched a fresh probe into the BSNL tender as the anti-corruption body’s guidelines forbid post-tender negotiations with successful bidders, as it gives opportunities for corruption. Equipment vendor, Ericsson had emerged as the lowest bidder in the North and South East zones while China’s Huawei was selected for the South and West Zones. The DoT too had earlier asked BSNL not to renegotiate the price with lowest bidder Ericsson since the move would violate CVC guidelines. But BSNL executives say that it had entered into post-tender negotiations with Ericsson since this could result in a 20-25% reduction in the price amounting to a minimum $1 billion saving for the company.

But, is this a genuine reason for renegotiation or any ulterior motives were behind this? Did BSNL at least consulted DoT on this renegotiation when the latter had already asked the former not to renegotiate? Hope all these questions will be answered in the probe launched by CVC and in PMO meeting on 6 January. This is the second major setback for the government after the CBI, under CVC directives, raided DoT offices for alleged irregularities in the allocation of spectrum and licences to eight firms in January 2008. All this doesn’t augur good for the government’s telecom revenue. Linked to this Rs 36,000-crore tender is 1 bn IT outsourcing contract with IT firm HCL Infosystems. This delay in the equipment tender will impact this outsourcing contract too.

The latest controversy of irregularities and Central Vigilance Commission’s seizing of documents to probe any such irregularities have cast shadow once again on BSNL’s integrity. If the government doesn’t come out quickly with its findings and set the path right if BSNL is found guilty of any violations or irregularities, it might be a beginning of the company slipping into a sick company which was once the industry top leader. It would become prey to private sector to take over. And already our government is well known for red tapism among the foreign equipment/technology vendors. This kind of probes on irregularities further delay in the tender execution, deteriorating not only BSNL’s image, but also our government as a whole, loosing revenue opportunities.

Source:http://voicendata.ciol.com/content/news/110010501.asp