BJP backs Sankhya Vahini project

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, MAY 2. The Bharatiya Janata Party today came out in defence of the controversial Sankhya Vahini project which has created ripples in political circles including the Sangh Parivar.

A detailed note circulated by the party amongst its Members of Parliament with the intention of educating them about the project, however, wittingly or unwittingly, reiterates the criticism made by the Parliamentary Standing Committee that the Telecom Commission - the implementing authority - was kept in the dark as it passed through several crucial stages. For instance, the note admits that the Telecom Commission was informed about the MoU a month after it was signed between the Department of Telecom and the American collaborator, IUNet, a fully-owned company of the Carnegie Mellon University.

Though the Telecom Commission took note of the project while reviewing a whole gamut of ``new (telecom) services'' nine months after the MoU was signed and presumably approved it at that time, the note concedes that the detailed project estimates are yet to be put up to the Commission.

The note nearly makes a major howler by stating that ``51 per cent of the equity of the JV will not be in Government's hands'' but sources later clarified that it was a typographical error and that no hidden meaning should be read into the statement. They asserted that the majority equity stake would vest with various departments of the Central Government.

Reacting to the criticism that the telecom department would lease a huge quantity of optical fibres to the project even though there was no policy on the subject, the note admits that the DoT/DTS in general does not sell or lease dark fibres. An exception was made in this case because the DTS was to be a shareholder in the project and the procedure for valuation of these fibres has been spelt out in the draft joint venture agreement, states the note.

It was unfair to criticise the Government for by- passing the global competitive route specially in view of the fact that IUNet had no track record of running high speed services while there were other international giants such as AT & T, MCI and Sprint, acclaimed masters in the field who could have given huge revenues to the Government in return for an equity stake, the note says.

Quoting Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu who presided over the meeting of the National Task Force on Information Technology which approved the project, the note says other countries (only Israel has been mentioned) have implemented similar projects with Carnegie Mellon even though they signed the agreements after India had entered into an MoU with IUNet.

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