The Hindu Business Line : Status quo in AP broadband project ordered

THE Andhra Pradesh High Court on Wednesday ordered `status quo' on the execution of the ambitious Rs 400-crore Andhra Pradesh Broadband project, while admitting a public interest litigation that expressed concern over awarding the project to the consortium lead by Aksh Broadband Ltd, terming the entire process "illegal, arbitrary and contrary to public interest."

The petitioner brought to the Court's notice that awarding the project to the consortium lead by Aksh Broadband would result in at least Rs 40 crore of revenue loss a year to the State exchequer as a result of granting free right of way.

Counsel for the petitioner Mr A. Tulsi Raj Gokul told Business Line that the Court found prima facie case for it to intervene in the matter and accordingly ordered status quo on the project's execution. It also admitted the PIL and directed to serve notices to the respondents.

The AP Broadband project seeks to connect all villages across the State by December 2005. The project with a 1-gigabyte pipe up to the mandal level hopes to reach out e-governance services to the doorstep of people through Internet kiosks.

According to the Counsel, the petitioner has challenged the action of the State Government in awarding the broadband project by giving overwhelming concessions to the members of the consortium. The members include Railtel Corporation of India, Tata Indicom, In-cable Network, Spectranet and Nuziveedu Seeds.

Further, the petitioner has submitted to the Court that by awarding the broadband project to the private consortium, the State Government has ignored public sector companies such as APTransco and Powergrid, which were already executing a similar project.

For a project involving a capital outlay of Rs 400 crore, the Government did not call for a global tender and selected a few handful of companies through request for proposal (RFP), the petitioner said.

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