NEW DELHI: A senior government functionary has opposed allowing Huawei to participate in the ongoing 5G trials in the country, citing security concerns about the Chinese telecom giant, which is suspected to be close to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the all-powerful Communist Party of China .Principal scientific adviser K Vijay Raghavan, who heads a high-level committee on 5G, said India should “go for (5G) trials immediately with all, except for Chinese vendors”. “For China, we should prepare pros and cons for going with them,” Raghavan said at the June 13 meeting of the sub-committee on 5G and technology trials, according to people who spoke to TOI on the matter. The committee comprises officials from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), ministries of external affairs, home, telecom and IT and the department of science & technology.The meeting saw representatives of different wings of the government taking divergent views on letting Huawei participate in the security trials. Yet, there was consensus about the need for safeguards to deal with security fears that the Chinese major evokes worldwide because of its rumoured ties with the Chinese political and military establishment.The Indian government will face a delicate diplomatic situation in taking a call on whether Huawei should be allowed to access the sprawling opportunity that India presents as a market for 5G technology.Chinese behemoth Huawei's demand that it be allowed to take part in India’s 5G trials has put the government in a potentially tricky spot. Huawei's insistence has the support of Beijing, which, while rejecting allegations and suspicions against Huawei, maintains that the Chinese option would be the right choice for India, given its technological edge.For Huawei, getting permission to participate in Indian 5G trials is critical as it comes at a time when it faces a global reversal after the ban from the US in 5G. The company feels that rejection of permission in India will not only be another reputational setback on security but will also give an advantage to global competitors such as Nokia, Ericsson , Samsung and Cisco, all of whom are vying for the multi-billion-dollar lucrative business that will flow in from the deployment of the new telecom technology.At a meeting on June 13, MEA argued for allowing all vendors, including Chinese, to participate in the trials with “additional safeguards” . It also said since India is the second largest market in the world after China, “we need to leverage India’s position”.The IB said that it was not opposed to any “technology proposal” , but also put on record the need to be mindful of security worries, saying that commercial considerations should not override security issues. “From a security perspective, we have to take an objective view and it is not to a specific country or company, and commercial considerations should not override security issues. The security concerns arising out of 5G need to be kept in mind. The permission to Huawei is linked to the real issue of how we secure our networks. The choice to keep out any vendor is a political call.”Its proposal that an indigenous software loaded in the open-source hardware of 5G will provide an ‘air-gap’ to protect the systems and secure them found support from the ministry of home affairs. The committee chairman said that a list of Indian IPRs in 5G should be prepared and these indigenous technologies should be deployed in the new telecom networks and equipment that will come up.Telecom secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that India’s stake with 5G is very high in view of the large size of the market and the ongoing digitisation efforts. However, she said that the country “needs to build security expertise” as telecom operators do not have depth on the subject. “Department of telecom wants a decision on field trials urgently with adequate safeguards, with or without Chinese vendors. For China, we should leverage this opportunity to hard bargain to our advantage. In case we want to go ahead with 5G trials with Chinese vendors, it may be appropriate to have the PMO’s approval giving the pros and cons,” the telecom ministry said.The IT ministry, represented by secretary Ajay Prakash Sawhney, said India should endeavour to have indigenous 5G stacks, including equipment manufacturing. Ashutosh Sharma , secretary of the department of science and technology, said that India should develop 5G testing capability at the earliest. “We should have the ability to test any product in our indigenous test bed,” Sharma said, also emphasising the need for studying “biological effect” of trials.Huawei said it wants to participate in the 5G trials and has assured the government that it does not share/compromise the data of individuals and enterprises. Huawei India’s boss also dispelled often-expressed fears that the Chinese government and military have unbridled authority to gain backdoor access to any information and data that the company carries, both on-shore and off-shore. “There are no relations between the company and the Chinese Army,” Jay Chen, CEO of Huawei in India, recently said.