Refuting the claims of a vernacular daily, the State Women, Child Development and Social Security Department secretary Amitabh Kaushal on Saturday informed that the tender for procuring smart phones for Anganwadi Sevikas of the State has still not been finalised.
A vernacular daily, in its news reports published on June 21 and 22 claimed that the department has finalised a tender to buy smart phones, which costs Rs. 6000 apiece in the market at a much higher price of Rs. 9000 per piece.
Addressing a press meet on Saturday, Kaushal said that when the report was published, the financial bid was not even opened by the department.
“The technical evaluation for the tender was done on June 12 in which four bidders qualified while five others failed. Following this, the technical revaluation was again done on Friday and subsequently the financial bid was opened,” he said.
Social welfare director, Manoj Kumar informed that all the gadgets required under the nutrition mission have to be procured by the Government of India’s GEM Portal. “The portal has a set specification for every gadget along with terms and condition and the procurement has to be done on that basis. After a bid is created a date for online tender is allotted and till the bid is not open, no one can know the rates quoted,” he said.
A total of 29,134 smart phones have to be bought under the said tender, the overall price for which has been disclosed after the opening of financial bid as Rs.26,95,76902 (26.95 crore). “We, as of now only know the price of the overall consignment quoted. There is no way for us to find out the individual price of each item, thus claiming that a phone is being bought for a particular amount apiece does not stand,” Kaushal said.
The last step of the tender process is reverse auction, the request for which has already been raised on the GEM portal. “Under this, the qualified bidders can go into open bidding and quote multiple individual prices. The reverse auction will come to an end only on June 26, at 4 PM. The bidder which quotes the least price will be selected,” the secretary said.
He added, “Till then there is no way of finding out the price of an individual phone. Only after the work order is allotted can it be said that the tender has been finalised.”