MTNL's mystery U-turn on quality check

As key details of a Rs 460-crore scam in an MTNL-Motorola deal for purchase of GSM equipment for the Dolphin mobile network tumble out, documentary evidence has revealed that MTNL relaxed key contract conditions to favour the multinational firm and top MTNL officials even misled the Prime Minister's Office in an effort to cover up this wrong-doing.

Documentary evidence available with CNN-IBN's Special Investigation Team suggest that some MTNL officials actually 'allowed' Motorola to dupe the Navratna PSU of hundreds of crore of rupees.

One piece of evidence available with CNN-IBN is a certification, dated 1994, which was provided by Motorola for the equipment it supplied to MTNL. Minutes of an MTNL meeting later in April, 2004, chaired by RSP Sinha, the head of MTNL Delhi, show that MTNL had then found these old tests 'unacceptable'.

But five months later, MTNL took a U-turn on this and exempted Motorola's 'imported equipment' from inspection.

The manner in which MTNL waived off the inspection clause going against its own reservation in the past about the 'old tests' used by the firm to certify its equipment clearly suggests that the process was no above board and it was followed with the sole objective of favouring Motorola and its sub-vendor, a Chinese company called Huawei, in the deal.

In fact, an interim report submitted by a committee of four senior MTNL managers in January 2005 had listed serious problems in the GSM technology supplied by Motorola.
Some of the problems listed in the report were:

Validation for coverage, including service quality, is yet to be offered.
The Closed User Group feature between technologies is not working.
WAP, MMS and GPRS have not been offered.

The post-paid to pre-paid subscriptions conversion test is not offered.
CNN-IBN also learnt that had MTNL tested Motorola's equipment and noted any shortfall, Motorola would have had to 'ensure coverage' at its own cost. MTNL didn't do that, instead it awarded the multinational firm an extra Rs 138-crore contract for network expansion.
RSP Sinha, the head of MTNL Delhi, clearly has a number of questions to answer on this entire exercise. But he chose not to talk to CNN-IBN. This can also be construed as an indication of his involvement in the multi-crore-rupee scam.

The ultimate casualty of this whole episode has been the Dolphin user, for whom problems like call drops, poor connectivity, poor coverage, one-way communication and voice breaks are the sad truths in times of GRPS and other high-utility cellular facilities.