NEW DELHI: The latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has exposed a deal that resulted in Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) suffering losses of Rs. 220 crores. The possibility of recovering the money is remote as the private company is in the process of liquidation.

The BSNL-Data Access India deal has been the talk in telecom circles for long but CAG has brought out the extent of negligence that caused BSNL to suffer losses of over Rs. 200 crores.

The public sector company failed to persuade Data Access India to cover all aspects with firm bank guarantees (BGs), allowed it to issue post-dated cheques that bounced and even when the failure of Data Access India to make payments was established, BSNL did not promptly disconnect the points of interconnect (PoIs).

The saga began in 2002 when BSNL entered into an agreement with Data Access, an international long distance operator, for providing interconnect facilities.

BSNL provided 17 points of interconnect (PoIs) to Data Access India and the bills for each PoI were to be raised on a monthly basis and paid within 15 days. BSNL could encash the bank guarantee and disconnect the PoI if the payment was not made. Data Access India was supposed to provide one initial BG of Rs. 10 crores besides separate BGs for each PoI. However, the company did not submit BGs for 10 of the 17 PoIs.

The BSNL was not insistent enough to persuade the company to cover all the PoIs with BGs. It also agreed to accept post-dated cheques though there was no such clause in the bilateral agreement.

As a result, 52 of these post-dates cheques worth Rs. 85 crores bounced for want of funds. BSNL also failed to disconnect the PoIs in time.

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