Datawind accuses Indian Cellular Association of defamation

There's a new development in the series of Datawind controversies over Aakash.  After blaming IIT Rajasthan and its assembler Quad Electronics, Datawind now vents its anger on the Indian Cellular Association (ICA). Reportedly, the Aakash maker has now sued the ICA for making defamatory remarks. Apparently, the ICA had made some statements harming the commercial interests of the company.  The statements wriiten to the ministry of Human Resource Development said that bigger companies such as Samsung and Nokia would be in a better position to handle the Aakash project.

End of the road?

“We have sent a legal notice to them for spreading false reports against us in the media and in government meetings including places such as the department of IT,” Datawind CEO Suneet Singh Tuli told ET. Reportedly, Pankaj Mohindroo, president of the Indian Cellular Association confirmed to have received the legal notice.

Earlier, Datawind had blamed IIT Rajasthan for the failure of Aakash for over-emphasizing on concerns regarding Aakash’s quality and functionality, allegedly to favour other firms. He had said that as part of the initial order of supplying 1,00,000, they had supplied 10,000 tablets to IIT-Rajasthan. He alleges that as soon as the tablets reached few students (as part of a pilot project), the institute began rejecting the tablets after there were reports about the device not being upto the standards set by the institute and that it failed during the pilot testing. The most recent incident has been the Datawind-Quad Electronics episodes. This row got muckier with Quad Electronics suing Datawind over pending payments.

Tuli said that Quad Electronics breached Datawind’s intellectual property, circumvented their relationship with IIT-Rajasthan, signed a direct MoU with them and then sold off their inventory in the open market. So, they will not be procuring any further tablets from the assembler. We wonder who is next to appear in the blame game and how badly this would affect the Aakash shipments.