Our Bureau
New Delhi, May 28 The Andhra Pradesh High Court has asked Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd to maintain status quo in the tendering process for awarding to Huawei a contract for rolling out GSM network in the South zone.
The status quo will be maintained till the next date of hearing, June 3. The court has asked BSNL to file a response to a petition filed by Nokia Siemens challenging the tendering process. The Chinese vendor Huawei will be a party to the case.
Nokia Siemens had challenged BSNL’s decision to disqualify its bids on technical grounds. The Finnish company said that it had supplied equipment to BSNL on previous occasions and, therefore, it was unfair to find technical problems with its bid. It alleged that BSNL had designed the tender to favour some vendors. According to Nokia Siemens, the technical deficiencies in its bid have not been explained. In a letter written earlier to the Department of Telecom, NSN said that it had clarified all questions which BSNL had raised during the valuation of the technical bids.
A similar petition was filed by Nokia Siemens in the Punjab and Haryana High Court which asked BSNL to submit its reasons for disqualifying the company. The Finnish company is examining BSNL’s reply given to the Punjab and Haryana High Court before taking the next step.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court’s order will delay BSNL’s plans to roll out 93 million lines across the country. The project was divided into four zones. While Ericsson has been shortlisted for North and East zones, Huawei was chosen for South. Bids for the West zone were not opened by BSNL after the Intelligence Bureau raised questions about giving contracts to Chinese vendors in sensitive regions. Though the IB had raised objections to giving contracts in the South region to Chinese vendors, BSNL went ahead with Huawei.
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