MC served notice for allotting Rs 12.25-cr contract in ‘haste’

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 10

An advocate has served a legal notice to the MC for cancellation of the Rs 12.25-crore contract for illumination of dark spots in the city. In the notice, the haste in which the contract was awarded has been questioned.

MC officials have denied any violation of rules while awarding the contract.

In the notice, advocate Pankaj Chandghotia said in a span of only 16 minutes, MC officials opened and evaluated the technical bid and opened, evaluated and accepted the financial bid by the firm. All this happened on March 2 from 12.51 pm to 1.07 pm, he claimed.

On the same day, the MC issued the Letter of Intent to the firm. He said March 2 happened to be Saturday, an official holiday at the MC office.

Chandghotia said further, the Letter of Intent had provided a period of one week for submission of 5 per cent bank guarantee. Considering the bank working days, the period would have ended on March 12. But since poll code was expected to come into force anytime soon, the firm arranged the bank guarantee of around Rs 60 lakh on March 7 and officials, allegedly without following the mandatory procedure of verifying the bank guarantee, issued the contract allotment letter on March 8, beating the poll code which came into force two days later, he added.

The advocated alleged that furthermore, the contract was awarded at a rate only 2.13 per cent lower than the estimated cost. The MC had been awarding similar tenders at rates about 25 per cent lower than the estimated cost, he added. Chandghotia said the officials this way caused a loss of around Rs 4 crore to the public exchequer.

He said if the contract was not cancelled or reviewed within three days he would take a legal recourse. MC Chief Engineer Manoj Kumar Bansal said he was yet to see the legal notice, adding that he would get the issues examined on getting a copy of the notice.

Devinder Singh Babla, Leader of the Opposition in the MC House, demanded a CBI probe into the issue, adding that the MC had floated several tenders just before the implementation of the model code of conduct.