Oil ministry wants CBI scanner on DoT

Explanation sought from communications ministry too.

The ministry of petroleum and natural gas has sought a CBI probe into the working of Department of Telecom's Telecom Engineering Centre on account of its delay in testing equipment that GAILTEL had procured from Canada-based equipment provider Nortel.

Taking a "serious view" of the department's failure to meet the deadline, the petroleum ministry has also demanded an explanation from the communications ministry.

"We received a complaint on the quality of equipment supplied by Nortel. Consequently, we referred the matter to Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC) for evaluation. But the TEC has been holding up the matter and that has raised suspicion regarding malpractices in the deal", GAIL (India) Ltd executives told Business Standard.

DoT officials did not provide any reason for the delay but said the matter was being looked into and would be sorted out soon.

Sources said the delay might have been on account of no one being appointed to head the TEC after its then chief, JR Gupta, was sent to BSNL in November 2005.

The issue dates back to the time when GAIL first approached the TEC to test the dense wavelength division multiplexing equipment it had procured to expand its network bandwidth.

As the petroleum ministry has decided that GAIL would provide the test instruments, the PSU had requested the TEC to furnish the name of agencies and sources for arranging the same.

Nortel has, however, said the company had submitted a detailed test plan to the TEC in January 2006, and had even guaranteed that "the testing could be finished within a month".

Following this, GAIL had approached the DoT yet again with Nortel's test plan and had sought its early approval. Last month, GAIL had requested the TEC to call a meeting to bridge all communication gaps between the two ministries and work out a plan for the smooth execution of the tests.

GAIL's questions on the quality of equipment spells further trouble for Nortel, which is already in talks with BSNL to reduce the size of its existing contract, initially estimated at $500 million.

Nortel had also been hauled up by BSNL for the poor quality of networks supplied by it.