Dot Scraps Tender For Microwave Radio Equipment

This has been made public in a DoT notification issued last week.

When contacted, DoT officials said the decision to cancel the tender was taken after a mid-year appraisal of the expansion programme of the department was concluded last month.

We found that we had enough equipment in our stores which would meet our requirement for the rest of the year, a senior DoT official said.

Telecom industry sources, however, say the reason behind the scrapping is that DoT has not cleared some past dues with the department of audio-visual publicity (DAVP) because of which the latter has refused to carry the tender advertisements in newspapers.

It is mandatory that government tenders are advertised in newspapers while calling for bids. Last year also the department had problems with DAVP which has remained unresolved even now. DAVP has made some claims which DoT has disputed.

DoT postponed some ongoing tenders late last month because of this problem. Among the tenders postponed were those for rural automatic exchanges using Centre for Development of Telematics technology, MCPC very small aperture terminals, digital circuit multiplication equipment and 11 GHz radio terminals.

All these tenders will now be opened in December.The tenders were to open in October and November.

In a tender issued early this September, DoT had asked for bids for 2000 terminals of 2 GHz 120-channel radio equipment.

Of this requirement, the department had decided to place an order on Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) for 700 terminals as per norm that 30 per cent of requirement is placed on public sector units. The order on ITI also stands cancelled, DoT officials said.

The DoT notification dated October 10 says: DoT tender no. MM/L/071996/000069 issued on 09.08.96 for procurement of 1300 terminals 2 GHz M/W (microwave) equipment and amended vide 14-00/96-MMT dated 13.09.96 is hereby cancelled. Three weeks ago, the department had decided to put the tender on hold.

The 2 GHz microwave tender is the third in a series of cancellations that DoT has effected since the Sukh Ram controversy.

The department earlier cancelled a Rs 250-crore tender for fibre optic cables and a tender worth Rs 160 crore for SDH (synchronous digital hierarchy) transmission equipment.