The Delhi High Court yesterday quashed the controversial multi-crore telecom equipment deal of Department of Telecommunication (DoT) with Advanced Radio Masts (ARMs) of Hyderabad, for being not in tune with tender requirements.
Justice C M Nayar in his 39-page hard hitting judgement said the decision to award the contract to ARMs, which former communication minister Sukh Ram favoured, for the purchase of two varieties of digital transmission analyser (DTA) by the Department of Telecommunication is based on extraneous considerations.
Allowing the petitions of PS Measurements and Control and VXL Engineers Ltd challenging the decision of DoT dated March 14, 1996, in allotting the 90 per cent of the supply of the equipments to ARMs, the judge said the DoT should be governed by the tender documents which stupulates that 30-50 per cent of the ordered quantity should be reserved for technically and commercially viable bidders.
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Justice Nayar also quoted the opinion of the technical evaluation committee (TEC) which had said that petitioners should be awarded the contract between 30-50 per cent as the prices quoted by them were much lower to the price quoted by ARMs.
The TEC had also warned Sukh Ram that if the contract was awarded to ARMs at the price quoted by it, the government would suffer a loss to the tune of Rs 13.3 crore.
However, the minister had favoured awarding the deal to the Hyderabad-based firm discarding the suggestions of the TEC, which consisted of chairman, telecom authority, member finance, member production, advisor production and deputy director general(MM-I).
Criticising the government for defending the award of contract to ARMs and others, the court said, there is no basis to say that the acceptance of the higher rates (as quoted by ARMs) will result in saving Rs 15 crore to DoT.
This averment is not borne out from the records and no explanation is offered (by the goverment). On the contrary, acceptance of the prices (quoted) by ARMs and others in comparison to the prices as offered by petitioners would have caused huge loss to the exchequer, it said.
The court said the TEC, on representation, reconsidered the case of petitioners along with others and held petitioners technically and financially more suitable than others for placing of telecom equipment orders.
Meanwhile, during the pendency of the peititons, DoT informed the court that they have scrapped the prices at which ARMs was awarded the contract for supply of equipments and fixed a uniform price much lower than the earlier.
Justice Nayar said, I am of the opinion that government has acted wisely by scrapping the placement of orders on the prices as indicated by ARMs and others, which are extermely high vis-a-vis prices offered by the petitioners.
While asking the government to stick to the tender clauses stipulating the distribution of the contract, the judge, however, said, it will be open for the government to satisfy itself fully to the quality and technical viability of the products before any further steps are taken for the placement of orders.