By IANS
New Delhi : State-run telecom major Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has called an emergency board meeting Monday to review the much-hyped multi-billion dollar GSM tender in the wake of a nationwide strike by its employees.
“We have been reviewing the tender for a long time. We are now going to just consider it in the board meeting on Monday where all options, as directed by the government, would be again looked at,” S.D. Saxena, director, finance, BSNL, told IANS Friday.
Almost one and a half years back, BSNL had invited tenders for procuring an additional 45.5 million GSM lines in which Ericsson and Nokia emerged as the lowest bidders, while Motorola was disqualified on the grounds of failing to meet BSNL’s technical requirement.
However, with new telecom minister A. Raja taking charge, things started taking new dimensions. Apparently, Raja has asked the telecom firm to renegotiate the prices quoted by the vendors.
On Wednesday, thousands of BSNL employees staged a daylong protest urging that the equipment contracts should be awarded to the selected vendors – Ericsson which put in a bid to supply the equipment for $107 per line and Nokia which bid for $176 a line.
The strike was called off after the BSNL staff union had a meeting with the minister and other senior telecom ministry officials, in which Raja had vowed to put the much-awaited third-generation (3G) policy on hold, till the tender is finalised, industry sources said.
The minister had even asked the company to explain why it disqualified Motorola, which even moved the Delhi High Court that compelled the telecom operator to stall the work on the tender.
It eventually withdrew the case in April this year reasoning that it wants BSNL to have its share of growth in India’s booming telecom industry.