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Centre scraps BharatNet Rs 1,950-cr 'discriminatory' tender
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SME Times News Bureau | 27 Jun, 2020
The central government on Friday asked the Tamil Nadu Fibernet
Corporation Limited (TANFINET) to scrap its Rs 1,950 crore BharatNet
tender as the bidding conditions were "restrictive and discriminatory",
NGO Arappor Iyakkam said.
BharatNet, is a central government
project to connect all village panchayats in the country with scalable
bandwidth using Optical Fibre Cable (OFC). In Tamil Nadu, the project
was planned to be implemented through state-led model by a special
purpose vehicle TANFINET.
The Ministry of Commerce and Industry's
Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) said in a
communication to Tamil Nadu's Chief Secretary, Secretary of Information
Technology, and TANFINET Managing Director on Friday to scrap the
tender.
The letter has also been sent to the Secretary, Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
"The
DoT, as the Nodal Ministry, is requested to direct TANFINET, Chennai,
for corrective action to be taken regarding immediate cancellation of
the tenders and re-tender with changed/non-restrictive qualification
criteria," DIPPT said.
In a statement issued here, Arappor
Iyakkam Convener Jayaram Venkatesan said that after hearing its
complaint regarding illegalities in the tenders through videoconference
on June 23, the DPIIT passed orders to scrap all the four BharatNet
tender packages and float it afresh with non-restrictive qualification
criteria.
"This vindicates Arappor Iyakkam's complaint of massive
irregularity and illegality in the BharatNet Tenders. The efforts has
prevented a major corruption from happening and has ensured that crores
of public money is saved," Venkatesan said.
Reacting to the
development, DMK President M.K. Stalin said Chief Minister K.Palaniswami
has to explain on the action to be taken against officials concerned
for issuing the "irregular tender" and the vigilance officials who had
said "there is no prima facie case".
Arappor Iyakkam said it had
earlier filed complaint about the massive changes in BharatNet tenders
to favour specific companies for all four packages
--(NIT/TANFINET/001/PACKAGE-A with tender value of Rs 350 crore;
NIT/TANFINET/001/PACKAGE-B with tender value of Rs 550 crore;
NIT/TANFINET/001/PACKAGE-C with tender value of Rs 550 crore; and
NIT/TANFINET/001/PACKAGE-D with tender value of Rs 500 crore) to the
Chief Minister, Chief Secretary, DoT Secretary, Central Vigilance
Commission, Competition Commission of India, and DPIIT.
"The DPIIT had stayed the tender opening and finalisation pending disposal of our grievance," Venkatesan said.
The
DPIIT had called a videoconference on May 23, 2020 to discuss the
allegations. There was also one other prospective bidder who had also
complained about the restrictive conditions, Arappor Iyakkam said.
At
the videoconference meeting, Arappor Iyakkam made a detailed
presentation on how tender conditions were massively changed on April
15, 2020 in violation of the CVC guidelines well as of DPIIT's 'Make in
India' order of 2017.
The NGO had alleged arbitrary and malafide
changes of three times increase of turnover and experience criteria and
also the introduction of proof of concept to bring subjectivity and
discretion in tender, changing router conditions to suit certain
specific companies and so on.
At the videoconference meeting,
Venkatesan said, officials from Tamil Nadu were not able to justify the
changes in the tender conditions during their initial presentation and
also when given another opportunity.
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