MHADA has awarded a multi crore rupee contract to construct retaining walls in uncoursed random (UCR) masonary/RCC work, at various land slide prone locations in Mumbai city and suburban area, to only one contractor after inviting bids from five contractors, allegedly in violation of rules framed for the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) (Urban) by the Union Government.
The contract was awarded by MHADA to “Ashcons Infrastructure Private Limited, Raigad, while “M. S. Constrotech Pvt Ltd. Jalgaon”, was runner up, as per the bid list dated 18 February, 2019. The contractors whose bids were rejected include: Dev Engineers, D R Shah Construction Co and Rakshit Infrastructure Project Pvt Ltd.
Basically the Tender No: DYCE/MSIB/e-tender/1/2018-19 was invited on 11 December 2018. But it was cancelled and reissued with a short notice from 11 February, 2019 to 14 February, 2019.
Mumbai suburbs have a vast stretch of land slide prone fragmented area. As such to club it and award the contract only to one contractor is unexplainable. Instead of this the work could have been allotted to different contractors, who usually undertake works such as repairs to toilet blocks, construction of retaining walls etc, on behalf of MHADA, which are carried out using MLAs local area funds. There are 36 MLAs in Mumbai and each one of them can easily make available the services of 4 to 5 small contractors, per constituency.
“The allotment of work to one single contractor will create his monopoly and eventually the quality of work will suffer, speed of work will be retarded and it will also create unemployment”, the Citizen’s Justice Forum President Sulaiman Bhimani alleged in his complaints to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.
“The tender process was manipulated by making it tailor made to suit the single contractor and other contractors were kept away”, he alleged.
The terms of the contract are also not clear. The release order states that "estimated amount will be determined time to time as per administratively and technically sanctioned estimate for particular work”. Usually 0.5 per cent Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) is collected, which is Rs. 20 lakh in this case. Therefore it can be presumed that estimated cost of work will be Rs. 40 Crore. But with the work been entrusted only to the one contractor, the cost is certain escalate beyond Rs. 100 crore, Bhimani stated. BMC has identified nearly 299 spots at risk of landslides during monsoon in Mumbai
Separate tenders are invited for individual jobs, as per the policy of the Union and state government, so that the employment could be generated and work is made available for all. Awarding work only to one contractor indicates a nexus between the Mumbai Slum Improvement Board (MSIB) and certain favoured contractors, he alleged.
The rules for the Solid Waste Management were framed by the Union Ministry of Environment in 2016. The Municipal Solid Waste Management Manual (MSWM) states that to award contract, to a single party, should be avoided. SBM is being implemented in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Chennai which generate over 10 MT garbage per day.
In his complaints, Bhimani has also referred to the Supreme Court judgements including: Raman Dayaram Shetty vs. IAAI and others (1979), Akhil Bhartiya Upbhokta Congress Vs State of MP and others (2011) and KasturiLal Lakshmi Reddy and others Vs state of Jammu and Kashmir, in which the SC has stated that “ the Government cannot act arbitrarily at its sweet will and like a private individual, deal with any person it pleases, but its action must be in conformity with standard or norms which are not arbitrary, irrational or irrelevant”.
As such the above contract be scrapped and the current practice of inviting individual tenders for every single work be continued. Besides an inquiry be held to find out why the MSIB and MHADA officials ignored directives of the Central Govt., CVC and SC, Bhimani demanded..
When contacted MHADA CEO and VP Milind Mhaiskar said that he was not aware of the facts and in turn directed this correspondent to MSIB CO Shahaji Pawar. However Pawar did not respond to phone call made or an SMS sent.