Nokia-Siemens plea dismissed by Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court today dismissed a petition filed by mobile equipment vendor Nokia-Siemens Network, asking for a stay on the recent Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) tender worth over Rs 30,000 crore.

After knocking on the doors of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), Nokia-Siemens had filed a petition yesterday in the Delhi High Court against its disqualification from the bidding process on technical grounds.

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

When contacted, a Nokia spokesperson said, "It is too early for us to comment on this. We are consulting our lawyers to determine our next course of action."

BSNL had opened the financial bids submitted by Ericsson and Huawei, while rejecting the offers made by three other vendors – Nokia-Siemens, ZTE and Alcatel Lucent.

Nokia-Siemens had raised issues regarding transparency of the tendering process since the company was not asked for any clarification for any of the zones that it had applied for, apart from the West Zone.

The company has also implied that BSNL had favoured some other vendors. The company said it was strange that, given the magnitude of the 93-million-line tender, only single bidders were qualified.

The tender itself has had its share of problems after security agencies raised concerns regarding Chinese vendor Huawei and sought to bar the state-owned telecom operator from using Huawei's equipment in the East and West zones. Nokia-Siemens had bid for the northern, southern and western zones.

BSNL's tender requires vendors to provide 25 million lines each in the North, West and South zones and 19 million lines in the East. However, BSNL has not officially announced the qualified companies or communicated the result of the tender to the companies.