ECoR TENDER COMMITTEE FOXED A MAJOR INDUSTRIAL HOUSE FOR USING UNETHICAL PRACTICE IN AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC PROCUREMENT
Bhubaneswar(Kalinga Voice) : To improve operational efficiency on a major pilot project, East Coast Railway procuring certain loco attachments technology. This technology is a proven one but Indian Railways is to customize it on a trial basis before its proliferation.
The quality and rate achieved in such developmental procurement are of paramount importance as they shall set bench mark for large scale future procurement covering the entire Indian Railways.
As per the information, a tender was floated for the said procurement in October, 2019 which was discharged due to high rates. Total three firms participated in the bid. The tender again re-floated in December, 2019 and 4 bidders were participated. However, since the rate offered by Lowest 1 firm being high, a negotiation was held with this firm and the firm was agreed to reduce the price by 25%.
Now a days, the entire process of tender system is being online. The negotiator on behalf of Lowest 1 firm promised to make a revised offer online, as agreed. But later on, it was found that the Lowest 1 Firm had made a revised offer by reducing the price which was less by 1% of the initial offer.
This was in utter disregard to the negotiation done as per rule. ECoR tender committee played a master stroke by making a counter offer to all the eligible four firms by distributing the required quantity equitably to the firms and quoting a price which was arrived in the negotiation, i.e., about 25% less compared to Lowest 1 firm offer.
This was done as because, if counter offer would have been made to the lowest 1 firm only for the whole quantity, then it was certain that they would have rejected it leading again to discharge of the tender. The move of the tender committee yielded and all four firms accepted the offer.
Thus, Railway shall get the experimental lot at 25% reduced cost from all the four firms, setting a good bench mark price for large scale future procurement of the item all over Indian Railways. Further, investigation is on by ECoR Vigilance to ascertain the reason behind Lowest 1 firm initially backing out from its negotiated offer to the Railways.
