Punjab: Haste by Food Dept Director in allotting tender for tarpaulin sheets to be probed

Ruchika M Khanna

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Chandigarh, December 12

A meeting of the technical committee of all state food agencies, constituted for floating a tender for purchase of 65,000 LDPE sheets (tarpaulin), was convened on a Saturday evening, wherein the technical bids were re-examined, financial bids opened and tender allotted after a clearance from the legal department.

All this happened in haste, only because Director, Food and Supply Department, Puneet Goyal had to proceed for election duty the next day. It is this haste in allotting of tenders for purchase of tarpaulin sheets which is being investigated by the state government after Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann asked for the entire purchase process of the sheets to be stopped. The Tribune had reported this in its news columns on Tuesday.

Despite repeated attempts to contact Goyal, he remained unavailable for comments as his phone was switched off.

Information gathered by The Tribune shows that after the tenders for purchase of tarpaulin were floated in September, the Food and Supply Department received the technical bids from 10 vendors. However, two of the vendors were found to be deficient on the conditions laid down in the tender and their bids were rejected in September end. Following this, these two bidders claimed that their bids had been ‘wrongly’ rejected and officers of the Food Department were asked to re-evaluate their credentials and bids. The committee okayed their credentials on October 23. The complaint received in the Chief Minister’s Office had alleged that ‘cartelisation’ of all vendors had been in effect in this regard.

It was then that a meeting was called on a late Saturday evening (October 28) and the entire process was okayed. While the lowest technically accepted bidder (L1) had quoted a price of Rs 8,050 per sheet, he had offered to supply only around 13,000 sheets. It was then that all other vendors were called by Additional Managing Director Anand Sagar for a meeting on October 30 and standard rate of Rs 8,050 per sheet was finalised. It is learnt that there was a diference of Rs 1,250 per sheet in the rates quoted by L9 vendor and L1 vendor. Interestingly, sources in the CMO say an informal inquiry had revealed that the cost of tarpaulin sheets had gone down by 40 per cent since last year, when these were bought for Rs 700 per piece.

Gurkirat Kirpal Singh, Secretary, Food and Supply, who has been assigned to investigate the matter, had asked the Director, Food Supply, to give an explanation by Tuesday. He said that he had received a reply from the Director. “I have yet to go through the contents of the reply,” he added.

Sheets purchased despite CM orders

Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had last Thursday ordered the entire process of purchase of tarpaulins to be stopped. But the same day, one of the state procurement agencies made online payments for the tarpaulin sheets procured from some vendors in Doaba region. It is now being investigated whether the payments were made before the orders of the CM.