sankhya vahini sunk

["Shiv Kumar" <shivkumar@satyam.net.in>]

A formal burial for Sankhya Vahini project

The controversial Rs 10 billion high-speed data network project involving a
US university was given a formal burial on friday, with government
announcing its decision to close the case for formation of Sankhya Vahini
India Ltd.

"The Cabinet, at its meeting on Thursday which was chaired by Prime Minister
Atal Bihari Vajapyee, was informed that the ministry of communications and
information technology has decided to close the case for formation of
Sankhya Vahini India Ltd," Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pramod Mahajan
told reporters in New Delhi.

The Cabinet had in January 2000 approved a proposal for formation of Sankhya
Vahini India Ltd, a joint venture company of the then Department of Telecom
Services, IUNet (a subsidiary of Carnegie Mellon University), US, Department
of Electronics and some educational institutions in India.

The ambitious project, aimed at expanding the bandwidth for easy access to
Internet and promoting educational and research activities, had rocked the
Parliament for several days with various sections stiffly resisting the
proposed project, alleging that the government had not shown any
transparency in the deal and that the project had security implications for
the country.

On October 2001, V S Arunachalam, president of IUNet (which was set up for
the project at Carnegie Mellon), conveyed to the government, the decision of
the university to withdraw from the ambitious project alleging red tapism.