Systemic Forgery, Manipulation & Cheating in Railway IP-MPLS Projects in the name of “MAKE-IN-INDIA” Part-2

Admin

After conducting due diligence on the #IPMPLS routers supplied in North Central Railway (#NCR) and comparing them with the same #product supplied to #RAILTEL under a different product category, our team has identified several critical technical findings-

Read with: “Systemic Forgery, Manipulation & Cheating in Railway IPMPLS Projects in the name of “MAKE-IN-INDIA”

Technical Non-Compliance & False Claims:

One of the #OEM has supplied a 1U router which, per #RDSO-specifications, cannot qualify as a modular IP- MPLS router. Specifically:

  • The design violates the true modular design. The XTA card, which acts as the motherboard, houses the packet switch fabric ASIC. All interface slots (SLOT1-3) connect to it via active microchip sets.
  • The #vendor misrepresented redundant OAM cards as control (CPU) cards.
  • If the XTA card fails, the entire router becomes non-functional — a critical single point of failure, despite having redundant PSUs and OAMs.
  • According to RDSO guidelines, an LER requires 4x10G ports (distributed in 2 cards), 8x1G optical ports (distributed in 2 cards), 8xE1, and 2xSTM1 ports, totaling 6-line cards.
  • OEM exploited the lack of clarity in RDSO specifications regarding “clubbed or separate” interfaces by using a single 8-port 10G card to fulfill both 10G and 1G requirements, violating the redundancy guidelines.

Yet the vendor claimed this box could perform the job of a fully modular, resilient, scalable router.

Financial Irregularities & Collusion:

The scam is compounded by evident collusion between NCR Railway officials and the vendor. Consider the following financial inconsistencies:

  • Supply ratio: 54 LSRs vs 20 LERs, completely contrary to standard deployment logic wherein LERs are needed at every station, and LSRs only at junctions.
  • OEM supplied combo cards to meet the base configuration but again charged them under variation approvals to make it complied under RDSO TAN Version 2.0, thereby billing twice for the same hardware.
  • Variation order are being processed for ₹7.14 crore for controller cards, ₹32 lakh for 4-port 10G cards & ₹37 lakh for 8-port 1G cards. Despite the router supporting only 3 slots, how were all these cards installed?

Clear concerns being raised — particularly the letter from Executive Director/QA(S&T)/New Delhi (Ref: RDSO/QS/NDLS/DI3 Infotech/IPMPLS Router, dated 21.04.2025) — variation approvals and procurement irregularities continued unchecked.

The above information clearly points to #technical-forgery, which may be difficult for the general public to fully grasp. However, we are confident that the Indian Railways Signal & Telecom (S&T) Department has the technical expertise to understand the depth of this manipulation.

We strongly urge them to remain vigilant in all future engagements and procurements with this OEM. To be Continued…