The home ministry wants a list of all telecom equipment imports pending with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) for over four months. In a letter to DoT, the ministry made this unusual query in the wake of complaints from the industry that the security norms announced in December 2009 have paralysed their functioning.

The list will also mention the specific reasons why the clearances were held up and what needs to be done by the vendors concerned to get them cleared. The ministry, headed by P Chidambaram, feels this will pinpoint the reasons for the delay. The ministry?s query follows a meeting of some manufacturers with it on Thursday.

On December 3, 2009, DoT amended licence conditions for telecom equipment imports, inserting a clause requiring security clearance for making purchase orders for telecom equipment or software. However, to ensure that red-tapism did not hold up expansion of telecom firms, it also said if the government did not object within 30 days, the consignment would be deemed to be cleared.

However, operators say that in practice, the fast-track system has not worked. Operators have to apply for clearance to the licensing wing of DoT, which forwards it to the Intelligence Bureau for conducting checks and then reverts to it.

DoT?s licensing wing is then supposed to intimate its WPC wing, which provides a no-objection certificate.

?In practice, the DoT licensing wing does not coordinate with WPC and the latter always takes the position that it is unaware of the expiry of the 30-day period. As a result, no clearance is taking place,? said an operator.

It?s not just Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE which face this problem: Telecom gear supplied by European vendors with factories in China are affected as well. ?As a result, equipment from even Ericsson or Nokia Siemens which have factories in China get stuck,? said another operator.

Frustrated by the delays, Tata Teleservices wrote a letter to the DoT on May 11: ?We had reapplied to DoT vide our various letters (more than 30 applications) for clearance of various equipment. But after more than a month, we received on April 28, two letters from DoT informing us that security clearances for vendors, namely Huawei, ZTE, Mobi Antenna Technologies, Sinsea Telecommunications, Leoch Battery, Lenova, Tongyu Communication Equipment is not granted.?

TTSL wrote: ?Your letter does not inform us the reasons for not granting security clearance to the equipment proposed to be imported from the above-mentioned vendors. The letters also do not inform us what needs to be done by us or by these vendors to satisfy DoT about these equipment?.

Companies like TTSL are severely affected since there are no competent non-Chinese vendors in the CDMA space where they operate. In the GSM arena where they have recently entered, everything is stalled because of non-approval of vendors.

Home secretary, G K Pillai has said that there?s no blanket ban on Chinese vendors. On its part, China?s Huawei has said that it is willing to submit itself to any test to prove that its equipment are of world-class and do not harbour have any spyware.