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

It is worth disclosing the business of corruption in Sub-Divisional tendering, where in most of the cases the beneficiary Contractor/Agency bribes the Executive Engineer and the Sub-Divisional Officer to get a chunk of split-up Non-Plan works in his favour. Priority is given to the regular Contractors/Agencies or those having political liaison.

Suppose a Non-Plan building (original work) of value Rs.15,00,000/- is split-up into 30 reaches, each of value Rs.50,000/-. The Sub-Divisional Officer then, at a time, put forth the tender call notice for all these 30 reaches, and reserves the bid acceptance date for only one to three days. The information about the tender call notice is kept hidden from all except the Executive Engineer and the beneficiary contractor/ agency.  To favour fixing of Sub-Divisional tender the Sub-Divisional Officer knowingly fails to transmit the copies of this tender call notice to the nearby Government Offices within the District, and this happens in violation to codal provision. This sort of violation is evident from the fact that you will never find the entry of a Sub-Divisional tender call notice of one Public Works Division in the inward diary of any other Public Works Divisions or other Government offices within the District prior to the lapse of the bid acceptance date.

Now the Sub-Divisional Officer collects a sum of Rs.416 (cost of each tender paper including 4% VAT) x 3 (number of tender paper sold) x 30 (total number of reaches) =Rs.37, 440/- or even lesser amount of Tender Paper Cost is realized where the no. of tender paper sold towards each reach is less than three.

Peculiarity of fixing Sub-Divisional tenders cross all limits when all the lowest (L-1) bids for these 30 reaches are so manipulated that it never goes below 99.5% of the Tendered Work value. Similarly, from the last few years, a new trend has emerged out, where in all the reaches of a split-up work are fixed with a single Contractor/Agency. Could you now imagine how bold these authorities have become? They have even forgot, what they will reply, if they are asked by the A.G. Audit to comply regarding these peculiarities and coincidences. However, A.G. Audit never put questions before the Executive Engineer regarding these peculiarities and coincidences in their ‘Audit Objections’? The research shows that it never happened earlier. The A.G. Audit limits its objection with the note “Unnecessary splitting-up of work without any solid reason”, but if you have some idea of the Auditing Standards Clause 4.7 and the INTROSAI, you can judge that A.G. Audit has lost a bit of their ethical & moral senses.

Fixing of tender for pecuniary benefit is a serious offense and about 100% of Public Works Divisions are involved in this malpractice, however the A.G. Audit who are entrusted to analyze this sort of peculiarities and coincidences have failed in their motive.

Therefore, friends, when A.G. Audit can take this malpractice as for granted why cannot we. Let the Executive Engineer split-up all the works and distribute these split-ups among his near and dear ones, somewhat at the 'Estimated Cost' and you never worry as the A.G. Audit will never inquire about these coincidences!!! (Read Part-I)

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...

Tips to Divisional Accountants/Divisional Accounts Officers (DA/DAO Orissa India)

Do you think that corruption is inherent in Public Works Divisions?

Well, if your answer is 'no' then you can be declared as an abecedarian or is completely inexperienced to judge the facts or may be your moral ethics has degenerated and that you have become a part of the corrupt system.

Underneath we discuss a few topics which are undeclared malpractices (those can be linked to corruption in one or the other-ways) that we can locate in most of the PWDs and whether these malpractices can have any financial implication is left before your conscience to decide.

Question-01:  Do you know that each and every Government office should maintain a document receipt register, where all the incoming documents are listed with a serial number and its receipt date?

Discussion:   Now realize, have you ever seen that a contractor's bill is forwarded by the Sub-Divisional Officer to the Division office with a forwarding letter and it is ever registered in the document receipt register of the Division. I regret to say that the answer is 'NO'. But why is this escape? The answer to this may be......

History of Accounting and Accounting Standards

There are evidences to conclude that art practice of accounting existed even in Vedic times. There are references to Kraya (sale), Vanij (merchant), Sulka (price) in Rigveda. Kautilya's Arthashastra contains details on business of keeping up accounts in the office of accountants. It provides details of matters which should be recorded, registers to be maintained, system of examination of accounts and details of punishments for default.