The Hindu Business Line : HC puts BSNL cellular tender on hold till Nov 16

Motorola was kept out of the bidding by BSNL on grounds that it did not meet the techno-commercial specifications required for participating in the tendering process. Motorola subsequently filed an appeal in the High Court challenging BSNL's decision.

Adjourned

A Bench comprising the Acting Chief Justice, Mr Vijender Jain, and Mr Justice Kailash Gambhir, said, "BSNL cannot award contract till the next date of hearing (November 16), though it may process it." The court adjourned the matter till November 16 after Motorola's counsel sought more time to go through the reply filed by BSNL. The State-owned BSNL, in its reply, has contended that Motorola had also failed on financial parameters.

BSNL reply

"As per bidding conditions, a company must be a profit earning company in the last two years but Motorola did not meet this criterion too as it suffered a loss of almost Rs 37 crore in 2004-05," said a BSNL source.

Citing the evaluation report of the Committee for Evaluation of Tender (CET), BSNL said in its affidavit that Motorola has not been able to establish the experience for the network sub system (NSS) component, which establishes calls between a caller and a called subscriber and has also not submitted the user certificate for the core equipment from Motorola's partner - Lucent Technologies.

BSNL submitted that while eligibility condition had stipulated that the company should have had experience of commissioning at least 20 million GSM network, Motorola provided a figure of 3.2 millions for the NSS equipment.

Motorola is expected to file its response by November 16.