Nagpur :- The Lakadganj Zone of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has spent Rs 1.83 crore by dividing large civil works into small packages to bypass the online tender process causing loss of lakhs of rupees to the civic body. Rules stipulate that any work with an estimated cost of over Rs 10 lakh should be tendered online to attract maximum participation and encourage competition. However, many authorities circumvent this regulation by breaking works into smaller pieces and following the old envelope system of tendering for obvious reasons.
NMC records of Lakadganj Zone from January to September 2024, through the RTI route, to find that 57 civil works were awarded by carefully evading the online tender process system. These works related to supply of ‘murrum’ (red laterite soil), cement flooring, installation of paver blocks, ordinary repairs etc, basically works which do not require any special skills. The works, if clubbed, were all over Rs 10 lakhs making it mandatory for the department to invite bids by tendering the same on the Maharashtra Government’s online portal.
The Municipal Commissioner Dr Abhijeet Chaudhary had recently issued a circular asking the civil engineering staff under the NMC to avoid dividing works into smaller parts. A Government Resolution (GR) also mentions that works of district planning committee or that sponsored by the State or the Centre should be tendered if the value is above Rs 10 lakhs.
The Public Works Department (PWD), which basically governs all such civil works, bestows emergency powers with executives to decide and allot works directly if the same are below Rs 10 lakhs. The officials of Lakadganj Zone used this emergency power to bypass the system by dividing the works to follow the old envelope system of tendering. Works under the head of cement flooring involving a sum of Rs 34.6 lakh was divided into 13 parts. Work of providing and installation of paver blocks worth Rs 53.66 lakh was split into 15 parts while the works of asphalting and repairs worth Rs 34.36 lakh and Rs 36.24 lakh were neatly sliced into 7 and 13 parts respectively. Similarly supply of murrum and sandbags worth Rs 24.27 lakh was divided into 9 smaller portions.
The deception however, worked only so far as the alleged favoured contractors of the powers that be in the Lakadganj Zone were only so many. So one Sameer Bante got three projects of cement flooring plus one of supply of murrum and repair work. M/s. M S A Construction got asphalting work three times and one cement flooring contract. One Dashrath Dhankar supplied murrum through three work orders while he also undertook repairs besides other contracts. Most of the bills were therefore in the range of Rs 2.9 lakh to Rs 3 lakh or Rs 1.9 lakh to Rs 2 lakh. Nothing exceeded Rs 10 lakh.
Works where tenders are floated online generally elicit responses 20 per cent below the estimated cost. The direct envelope system, where a coterie or syndicate of contractors often comes to be formed for distribution of works, gets bids which are 1 or 2 per cent below the tendered cost. If this thumb rule is applied in the Lakadganj Zone works, the NMC could have easily saved over Rs 30 lakh or more had it tendered the works online.
