MP praises Centre for priority to mobile telecom connectivity

Lok Sabha MP from Arunachal Pradesh Nonong Ering has expressed gratitude to the Centre for taking a "bold decision" for prioritizing rolling out mobile telecom connectivity in the unconnected villages of the North East region.
In a letter to Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad yesterday, Ering, who represents Arunachal East Parliamentary constituency said, "This initiative will immensely help the region and boost economic activities with accelerated industrialization and socio-economic growth which remained deprived for all these years in the region.
We understand that BSNL and DOT have come out with tenders for procurement of equipment and operation of these networks.

I understand that as per the terms of the BSNL tender, there is a provision available for the bidder to get the technical compliance certification, approval of the offered technology after the successful completion of financial bidding," the Congress MP said in the letter.
"In my view, this approach can lead to a peculiar situation in which if a financially competitive bidder does not have a technically complied certified product and same is ascertained after the lapse of many months, whole project time line shall get affected badly," he pointed out.
"In order to have at par technology and facilities available for my constituency, it must be made mandatory that only technically qualified, fully complied and certified technology bidder shall be qualified to participate in the financial bidding," he said in the letter.

"I also understand that this is normally the practice which BSNL follows in other larger projects of similar importance," he said adding, as the region is highly sensitive due to sharing of international borders, the measure would also ensure that there is no adverse impact on the project due to proxy-contenders.