NEW DELHI, MAY 23: The Delhi High Court today quashed the controversial multi-crore telecom equipment deal of Department of Communication (DOT) with Advanced Radio Masts (ARMS) of Hyderabad for not being in tune with tender requirements.

Justice C M Nayar in his hard hitting judgement said that the decision to award the contract to ARMS, favoured by former communication minister Sukh Ram, for the purchase of two varieties of Digital Transmission Analyser (DTA) without a jitter by DOT ``is based on extraneous considerations.''

The judge allowed the petitions of P S 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 and said that the DOT should be governed by the tender documents which stipulates that 30-50 per cent of the ordered quantity should be reserved for technically and commercially viable bidders.

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 government). 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 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.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.