High level manipulation in tender is worth Rs. 238 Cr.: Modus Operandi-2

In our previous posts of the above subject “High level manipulation in tender is worth Rs. 238 Cr: Modus Operandi-1” we have highlighted that the eligibility conditions of this tender floated by M/s IRCON International were such that it did not match the majority of the scope of work. The bidding conditions were kept in such a way that competent PSUs and telecom companies were kept out of bidding to favour a particular firm or a few.

The tender is a high value S&T work, hence a pre-bid meeting should have been scheduled at the time of publication of NIT itself. To the contrary, a request for a pre-bid meeting was denied even after interested parties asked for it in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the scope of work.

Most importantly, as per GCC-2022, which is applicable to works contracts on Indian Railways, it is mandatory for every tender having an advertised value of more than 50 crore. Still no pre-bid meeting was accepted nor held.

It appears pre-bid queries of PSUs have been ignored. They are not part of the “Reply to pre-bid queries” and neither any revised “Reply to pre-bid queries” was issued. It must be investigated whether official communication from interested PSUs and other reputed telecom companies have been intentionally excluded from Tendering Authority’s responses published on tendering portal.

Not only this – while it is a standard practice in Indian Railways to allow Joint Venture (JV) for works tenders having value of more than 10 crore; in this high value tender when initially published, JV firm was not permitted to bid. It must be investigated under whose approval this condition was added.

It is evident from tender bidding pattern, that qualified and eligible bidders including PSUs were to be ignored that’s why bidder eligibility conditions were not relaxed, instead just one week before the then bid submission date, a corrigendum was issued allowing JV/Consortium to bid.

GCC-2022 conditions were deleted and conditions were added in such a way that preferred bidders got a chance to bid with relaxed conditions. Initially JV firms were not allowed and special JV/Consortium conditions were not mentioned in the original tender.

It must be investigated further whether deviations from GCC-2022 were done to favour a preferred bidder, while PSUs and other reputed telecom companies are kept out.

Already PSUs had raised the concerns over the bidder eligibility conditions being restrictive and not in accordance with the scope of work.

In addition, PSUs have raised concern that the entire tender was already made dependent on support of a single Electronic Interlocking OEM.  The weightage of this work is only 6% of the total tender value.

PSUs have raised a concern that BoQ of Schedule IV – Cellular Communication having an estimated value of 60 crore does not match its required functional specification. This too was not clarified.

The Railway Board is requested to review this tender and order to cancel it immediately.

IRCON should be asked to refloat the tender after suitably changing the eligibility condition so that there should be a competitive bid for savings to the public exchequer. To be continue…

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