SHILLONG:
The All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) has alleged “illegal connivance” among contractors of the under-construction assembly building and questioned the state government for not taking action against the firms for collapse of the dome in May this year.
In a letter to the Minister in-charge PWD (Buildings) Dasakhiat Lamare, national spokesperson of the opposition party, Saket S Gokhale, said the episode reflected “shocking irregularities” and an attempt to cheat the government and the people of Meghalaya.
The party also found as “shocking” the government’s failure to detect this unholy nexus and its non-action toward ascertaining what type of illegal collaboration was going on between Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd, Badri Rai and Company and Shiva Enterprises and the reasons behind that.
“The collapse of the Assembly dome and the loss caused to the exchequer is a direct result of this illegal connivance,” Gokhale said while adding that the government was reportedly continuing with the same contractor even after the report submitted by IIT-Guwahati.
“This clearly means that the unholy nexus is going to continue and the people of Meghalaya need answers as to why this is being allowed,” he said.
The tender for the project was floated in 2018 and the bidders included M/s Badri Rai and Company and Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd.
Badri Rai and Company was disqualified for not fulfilling the qualifying criteria of having successfully completed similar works during the last 7 years of key government buildings with dome or similar architectural features.
The other bidder was M/s Shiva Enterprise. This firm was disqualified as it did not submit hard copies of the technical bid.
What follows is revelation of a lack of monitoring and gross irregularity in the construction of the new Meghalaya assembly building, the letter stated.
The contract was finally awarded to Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd whose website clearly states that the company does not sub-contract work to any other firm.
However, RTI findings revealed that the firm has subcontracted construction work of the new building to both the contractors who were earlier disqualified.
“It baffles the mind that the Govt of Meghalaya and PWD (Buildings) allowed Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd to blatantly and brazenly subcontract the construction work to 2 contractors who had been disqualified at the tender evaluation stage,” he said adding, “This entirely defeats the purpose of a technical evaluation of a tender bid if disqualified contractors are eventually going to be subcontracted by the winning contractor.”
Gokhale further asked whether the PWD (Buildings) department was aware that Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd had subcontracted to the two disqualified contractors or whether it had been asked as to how it could do it.