Monday 7 November 2011

Part-I-Have we lost transparency in Sub-Divisional Tendering?


Standing rules and instruction: Friends you must be aware of the Govt. Instruction and its Department Circular No.20796, dated 24.10.2005 vide which a ban has been imposed on Splitting-up of work with the following conditions:

  1. Under non-plan scheme such as repair to roads, C.D. works, buildings and other irrigation and P.H. works limiting to Rs. 5.00 lakhs may be split up into small reaches after obtaining approval of competent authority
  2. In extraordinary situation of emergent nature such as breach of roads, repair of C.D. works restoration of structural damages due to natural calamities and also in case of visit of V.I.Ps and V.V.I.Ps split-up of work may be done without any financial limit on approval of competent authority.
  3. The quality of the work should be maintained. 
  4. This instruction will come into effect from the date of issue. 
  5. All the relevant Codal Provisions stand modified accordingly. 
  6. A deviation from this instruction would be viewed seriously and disciplinary action would be taken against the delinquent.

Suitable instructions may be issued from your level to all sub-ordinate officers under your control under intimation to this Department (Memo No.1233/W., Dated 20.01.2006).
Discussion: We have noticed that majority of Non-Plan works are split-up for no defined (specified) reason as if power to split-up a work has been delegated with the authorities only to facilitate them to split-up a work and bring it under the financial limit of the Sub-Divisional Officer i.e., Rs.50,000/-.

As par prevailing norms an Executive Engineer (Divisional Officer) can split-up a work (works specified under Sl. No.1 of standing rules and instruction) valued up to Rs.5,00,000/- and what, if its original value is Rs.20,00,000/-? Here the authority of Superintending Engineer comes into being; he splits-up this work into 4 or 5 packages and further the Executive Engineer splits-up these packages into reaches of value up to Rs.50, 000/- thus the whole work worth Rs.20, 00,000/- comes under the tendering limit of the Sub-Divisional Officer. Now I would request you to strain your mind to remember the following:

While scrutinizing the Sub-Divisional cash accounts you must have come across some receipts made towards cost of tender papers for some split-up works. If you notice carefully you will see that for each split-up works only two to three tender papers have been sold and their costs realized. My question is that, why, only two to three tender papers have been sold why not more than that for example 4, 8 & 10 as like it happens in case of open tender. Why there is uniformity in the number of tender papers sold in each and every case throughout the state?

Have you ever seen that a Sub-Divisional tender call notice is received at the Division and tagged on the notice board or circulated within the district’s Govt. offices for public notification prior to lapse of the acceptance date of bids? We find the answer as ‘No’; also these notices are even not registered in the Division’s inward diary. But why this lapse, have you ever thought about it, is there any compulsion which prevents the Sub-Divisional Officer to sell only 2 to 3 tender papers for each reach of work and why he seldom transmit the tender notice to his Division office or nearby Govt. offices prior to lapse of the bid acceptance date? Read more...

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