Sukh Ram Wanted To Skip Tender Route For Two More Orders

The telecom commission, however, decided to disregard the former minister's note seeking shelter of the code of conduct guidelines of the election commission. A similar directive by Sukh Ram trying to place orders for optical fibre cables on 10 companies was ignored by the top brass of the the department of telecommunications (DoT) in April.

According to documents with Business Standard, Sukh Ram wanted 2,370 MARR systems to be placed on 14 companies including two Hyderabad ones, ARM Ltd and Sinclair Electronics, the company of Prabhakar Rao, son of former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao. Also, Sukh Ram's directive says that 315 MARR systems may be sourced from five firms which had never supplied earlier them to DoT.

 

Sukh Ram wanted the order for 4/36 MARR systems to be placed on: ARM and Shyam Telecom (400 each), Telematics, Inter City Cable, Sinclair, Goldstone, Natelco, Technicom and UTL (165 each). The public sector unit, Hindustan Telematics Ltd was alloted an order of 100 4/36 MARR systems. The remaining 315 4/36 systems were to have been placed on ICS (75 systems), BINFO, HET, Navnidhi (based at Hyderbad) and ANCO (60 each). One of these companies, HET was further sought to be given 125 of the 2/15 MARR systems.

Sukh Ram's order, which raised many eyebrows in DoT, was to have been placed just a few months after companies were shortlisted for an order for 3,000 MARR systems in January this year. The minister justified his `out-of-tender' orders claiming that the tender process would take long and would result in a loss to DoT. The letter notes: An additional requirement of 3,370 systems of 4/36 and 125 systems of 2/15 MARR has been projected for the year 1996-97 against which there is no tender pending as on date. ... the target earmarked for the year 1995-96 have not been acheived. .... Abnormal delay in procuring equipment not only disturbs our set targets but would cause financial loss in crores to the DoT. With a view to ensure that we do not fail in acheiving targets for the year 1996-97 coupled with the backlog of the current year due to non-availability of equipment in the field, it is desirable that we should procure some equipments immediately. In the case of 2 GHz radio sets, Sukh Ram wanted an order of 1,500 radio sets placed on firms which had supplied the sets in a 1992-93 tender for the same equipment.

This was in addition to a controversial `out-of-tender' order for about 1,500 sets of 2 GHz radios early last year more than half of which was placed on Himachal Telematics Ltd (of the Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd group). The company's turnover went up by more than Rs 100 crore in through supply of 2 GHz radios. Of the two orders, DoT has decided not go in for a MARR tender because the requirement of the 3,400-odd such systems earlier projected has been cut since the target of the number of village phones to be connected this year.

However, DoT still has a requirement of 1,500 sets of 2 GHz radios for which a tender is open now. The tender is to open on October 26.