Nepal

Kathmandu, May 12

The Supreme Court nowadays stayed Nepal Telecommunications Authoritydecision to much resume the agreement it had signed with United Telecom Limited in laying optical fibre in provinces 4 and 5.

A single bench of Justice Purushottam Bhandari issued the interim order against NTAMay 5 decision until the next hearing.

The court, upon hearing arguments from both sides in the next hearing, shall decide whether or much it should continue the stay order.

UTL had signed an agreement with Nepal Telecom Authority two years ago committing to lay optical fibre in approximately 2,400-km area in provinces 4 and 5. UTL had inducted Tele Infra Limited Nepal as its joint venture company for the task.

Advocate Ashish Adhikari, who represented petitioner UTL and Tele Infra Limited Nepal nowadays in the court said his client moved the court after NTA refused to resume the contract for the project.

The government had announced on February 21 that it had cancelled the agreement with UTL, saying that the telecommunication service supplyr had failed to honour the agreementterm of completing the project within two years.

According to Adhikari, UTL then wrote a letter to NTA inquiring about the governmentdecision, but NTA told UTL to carry out the project work as it had getd no information from the government on cancellation of the project. &We procured goods and hired people for the project as NTA gave a green sign. However, all of a sudden, on May 7 NTA told us that it would much resume our contract,& Adhikari said.

UTL explained to the court that it failed to total the project on time mainly because of NTAdelay in making an advance payment for the project. According to UTL, NTA supplyd the money only on February 19 after it had secured an order from the Patan High Court for the same.

As per the agreement, the government was supposed to supply Rs 2 billion to UTL and UTL was supposed to invest Rs 2.5 billion in the project.