Bidders told to give bank info

Ruchika M Khanna

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 26

Under fire from the Opposition over Power Minister Rana Gurjit Singh’s employees bagging mining contracts, the government has made it mandatory for each bidder to furnish details of the bank account from which the money will be deposited. It should include the names of the bidder and the account holder and the bank’s IFSC code and address.

In case a bidder deposits bills from NRE accounts, similar details will have to be furnished, said a notification.

Officials in the Directorate of Mining, Department of Industries, said though the bank details could be traced earlier too as the transactions were online, they had introduced more checks and balances in the process. “We had earlier incorporated the provision for seeking PAN card details of the bidders,” said a government functionary.

As per the new notification, the difference in each bid amount cannot exceed Rs10 lakh. This has been done after the government drew flak over unrealistic and speculative bids being filed by bidders, who later refused to honour these.

As per the new rules, if the reserve price of a quarry is Rs26 lakh, the first bid cannot exceed Rs36 lakh, as also each successive bid. In the case of Chaharpur (Amritsar), the bid had jumped from Rs40 lakh (against the reserve price of Rs38.26 lakh) to over Rs1 crore. In most of the quarries that have come for re-auction, the difference between the reserve price and the final accepted bid was more than 20-34 times.

Meanwhile, the government has issued notices to all bidders who failed to turn up after they indulged in speculative bidding, saying that they had been blacklisted. The government had also forfeited over Rs25 crore that these bidders had deposited as the earnest money to participate in the auction. The auction of the remaining 56 quarries, located in 12 districts, is now scheduled for June 14.