AP High Court orders status quo on BSNL's 93-mn line tender

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has ordered status quo on the tendering process in the south zone for the Rs 30,000-crore BSNL tender in response to a petition filed by telecom equipment vendor Nokia Siemens Network.

Nokia Siemens had alleged the state-run telecom operator’s recent 93-million line tender was conducted in a non-transparent manner, leading to its disqualification on technical grounds.

The Andhra Pradesh High Court has directed the respondent (BSNL) not to proceed with the finalisation of the tender until further orders. Therefore, until the next hearing on the matter, which will be held on June 3, BSNL will have to put on hold the finalisation of the tendering process in the south zone.

Chinese company Huawei, which was the only financial bidder in the south, was slated to get the contract even though there were major objections raised by security agencies on giving orders to a Chinese company due to security risks. However, BSNL came up with a formula that Chinese vendors will not be allowed only in states which have international borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar and China.

Under this policy, Huawei would automatically get eliminated from the west zone where, again, it was the only financial bidder. But it would have got the contract in the south zone.

Nokia Siemens approached the Hyderabad High Court subsequent to the dismissal of a petition filed by it at the Delhi High Court, asking for a stay on the recent BSNL tender.

In the Delhi High Court, BSNL had submitted that the matter pertains to a tender floated by the state-run company in the Chandigarh, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata zones. Therefore, the division bench in Delhi ruled that Nokia Siemens could approach the appropriate high court where the jurisdiction lies.

In a recent hearing by the Punjab and Haryana High Court on the matter, the court directed the state-owned telecom operator to disclose the reasons for disqualifying the telecom equipment vendor Nokia Siemens Network from its recent 93-million line tender.

BSNL chose the bids submitted by Ericsson and Huawei, while rejecting the offers made by three other vendors namely, Nokia Siemens, ZTE and Alcatel Lucent. However, BSNL has not officially announced the qualified companies or communicated the result of the tender to the companies.

Nokia Siemens had raised issues regarding the transparency of the tendering process since the company was not asked for any kind of clarifications for any of the zones that it had applied, apart from the west zone. Nokia Siemens had bid for the northern, southern and western zones.