Desilting – Part 3
Some people or I can say Politicians don’t take NO for an answer especially if you have put all your efforts to ensure victory for the agency from your constituency.
I should certainly give credit to Mr Lokesh Jain who challenged the high and the mighty and approached the court to seek justice against the irrelevant specifications put by MCGM to accommodate Vaibhav Hydraulic. Fortunately for him justice prevailed and not only did he defeat the cartel but also managed to bag two projects.
Now there seems to be tremendous pressure on the department headed by the Chief Engineer Mr Choudhary to either cancel the tender or to use his might on the L1 bidder to take the boom from Vaibhav Hydraulic at their rate. This makes me wonder whether the Desilting project is for actually Desilting or for filling the coffers of companies like Vaibhav Hydraulic at the cost of the BMC.
The officer’s blue eyed boy Mr Lakshaya Gupta has anyway gone all around town saying that Ashoka-Akshay JV backed by one of the leading conglomerates which has recently bagged two huge real estate packages in Mumbai from the Maharashtra Government, will get the Mithi redevelopment project.
I think BMC could save the additional cost of going through the tendering process and instead just print the name of the desired L1 contractor in the newspaper. Why go through the process of making mockery of the tendering process when specifications and estimates are anyway prepared by the probable L1 bidder & much capable companies having the know-how are not allowed to participate. It’s a purposeful wastage of public money If healthy competition is not encouraged and that’s what is happening brazenly.
I sure hope MCGM pulls up its socks and makes necessary changes before capable contractors lose their faith in the tendering process.
Vikrant Meena Hemant Joshi.
