Communications minister A Raja’s bid to cancel the $4.8 billion tender by Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) for procuring 4.5 million GSM lines was thwarted by a legal opinion from additional solicitor general Gopal Subramanium. When Raja asked BSNL to look at the possibility of scrapping the tender, BSNL sought legal opinion from Subramanium on whether there was any ground to cancel the tender.

Subramanium opined that scrapping this tender would be unconstitutional and could be questioned in a public interest litigation (PIL). He noted that the tender documents are not inconsistent or ambivalent. In such a situation, the tender could be scrapped only if either BSNL didn’t need new network or BSNL couldn’t make payments on account of a financial recession.

“Neither of these two conditions has been stated to exist,” Subramanium noted in his legal opinion, a copy of which is with The Indian Express. “Therefore, it would be unconstitutional to scrap the tender.” The tender was issued during Raja’s predecessor Dayanidhi Maran’s tenure. As first reported by The Indian Express on May 31, the first major decision Raja took after taking charge of the ministry was to ask BSNL officials to bring down the prices quoted by vendors in the tender.

Ericsson, the lowest bidder, had quoted a price of $107 per line in the tender. According to the tender conditions, the order will go to Ericsson and Nokia, the second lowest bidder, at the price quoted by the lowest bidder. As reported earlier in The Indian Express, BSNL’s GSM network is already over stretched — in most parts of the country, there is no capacity available with the company and it cannot give new telephone connections. This has had an adverse impact on its subscriber base and it has slipped to number three position in terms of total subscribers. BSNL, therefore, urgently needs to expand its network.

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