After spat over bids, CM forms panel

Ruchika M Khanna 

Tribune News Service 

Chandigarh, January 20

Taking a serious view of Local Bodies Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu’s stand on not allotting development works to single bidder, Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh has taken the matter in his hands.

With projects getting delayed leading to apprehensions that it could harm the party’s prospects in the Lok Sabha elections, the task to allot works quickly, where single bids are received, has been assigned to a four-member committee headed by Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh. 

The committee has been set up to prevent further delay of projects. Congress MLAs, who had pre-budget deliberations with the CM, had apprehended that holding back of development works was weaning away voters from the party. The Tribune had reported how Sidhu remained defiant on not allotting any single bid tenders during a meeting with the CM yesterday. 

Sources say upset with Sidhu’s style of working, mainly his “random approach with regard to single bid tenders”, the CM has asked for a status report on the allotment of works by the Local Bodies Department in the past two years.

“Capt Amarinder has been told that Sidhu has awarded tenders on single bid for non-critical works, which have no direct bearing on the state’s development. He was told that the minister had accepted a single bid to hire Grant Thornton to audit transactions of the previous government, which was described as a clear case of fault-finding and could be questioned legally, as the constitutionally mandated audit by the CAG had already been completed for many of these works allotted till 2016,” said an official. 

Sidhu also recently awarded open tenders of LED streetlight in municipal towns to single bids after three re-tenders. Immediately after this, the CVO of his own department issued a letter to field offices to send relevant records for this project. The project since stands stalled, the sources said.