Development projects in Jharkhand are often sacrificed at the altar of a bidder who is pushed out of a contract mid-way for under-delivery or sometimes the project itself is postponed for lack of qualified bidders.
The pattern cuts across Government departments with remarkable degree of uniformity with regard to bidding process, awarding of tender and culmination with scrapping of the contract by respective department. Ranchi Municipal Corporation’s (RMC) hospital situated in Ranchi’s Ratu Road was renovated by bringing down the earlier dilapidated building has not find any takers despite repeated floating of bids to run the hospital.
Interestingly, the RMC had to call off the bid invited for the purchase of 30 low floor buses on one occasion only to issue it again in last month. The earlier bid was called off as only one bidder had applied for the bid.
“Only one bidder had come forward earlier so we had to call it off,” said Deputy CEO Shailendra lal.
A finance ministry circular delegates the right of awarding a bid, provided it is floated for three or more times, to a competent authority but officials seem too short on confidence to take such a step. “We can award the tender to the single bidder on third occasion but do not want to act in haphazard manner in doing so. We pay them,” added lal.
The water pipeline project, touted as important to quench Ranchiites’ thirst, has been cancelled as it exceeded the time limit set for completing the project. The contract for Rs 288 crore worth project was awarded to Hyderabad agency IVRCl.
“The agency did enough damage to the project so we decided not to tolerate them anymore and terminated the contract,” said Engineer-in-Chief DWSD, Shardendu Narayan adding “The project was in wrong hand.”
Narayan confided that the department is reworking on the project and it may take couple of more months to get it back on track.
Significantly, the Road Construction department has suffered most due to erring contractors. Earlier, as many as 67 contractors were prevented from taking part in the tender process besides blacklisting 5 and 8 recommendations for blacklisting on separate occasions.
Ranchi’s much awaited and talked about project, Ring Road, has virtually met the same fate as the procurement of low floor buses.
The Road has been a subject of intense political debate on occasions.