Editorial – December 2022

Cartelization raises procurement costs and leads to the exchequer losing money. Our data driven cover story exposes how suppliers synchronized and submitted coordinated bids in BSNL’s tender for a mega ground based tower infrastructure being rolled out under the 4G ‘saturation project’ targeting uncovered villages. The cartelization was done in collusion with some officers of the telecom PSU and USOF, with a higher price cue embedded in the tender document itself. This is a high value tender worth more than Rs 17,000 crore and the geographical spread covers 14 clusters.

Tender specifications and tower heights also need a review as all these towers are to be installed in remote, isolated areas, on hilltops where population is sparse.

But above all, it tests the claims of the telecom minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw who in a statement recently in Lok Sabha, said that earlier regimes used BSNL as a cash cow and times have now changed. This tender shows that clearly this is not the case and while what the minister says is true for the political dispensation, the same cannot be said of the officialdom.

Read our cover story, for all details of item-wise price quoted in the bids, how the suppliers formed the cartel to jack up prices and the specific portions of the tender document that dropped hints for the suppliers to swing into action to quote inflated prices.