The posts and telecommunications ministry has issued a show-cause notice to Asaduzzaman Chowdhury, the former managing director of BTCL, accusing him of misconduct for commenting in a Star news report.

The report, "Penalised by going by the book", highlighted several counts of violations of rules by Abu Hena Morshed Zaman, secretary to the posts and telecommunications division that oversees BTCL, in the tender process for a Tk 463 crore telecom ministry project to get the infrastructure ready for 5G.

Documents pieced together by The Daily Star show that Chowdhury was penalised for following the due process in the tender, which saw three takers.

None of the three applicants fully met the technical requirements of the project, so Chowdhury did not sign off on the technical evaluation report, which would have allowed the tender process to move to the next stage. He instead called for a fresh tender.

The report cited Chowdhury, who said he followed all the public procurement rules at every step when rejecting the technical evaluation committee's report. Zaman declined to comment for the report.

A day after the report was published on November 13, Chowdhury was issued the show-cause notice that was signed by Md Rafiqul Islam, a deputy secretary.

Chowdhury was given five working days to clarify why he would not be charged with "misconduct" under Employee Discipline and Appeal Rules 2018.

The information disclosed in the said report is false, motivated and defamatory to the government and the Department of Posts and Telecommunications, read the notice.

Contacted, Telecom Minister Mustafa Jabbar said he was unaware of any notice served to Chowdhury.

Chowdhury was suspended from his job as the acting MD of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited by the ministry of posts, telecommunications and information technology on November 7.