Chennai: Tender for LED streetlights stayed
Section 2 of tohe notification deals with eligibility criteria of the bidders and section 3 deals with qualification of the bidders.
Chennai: The Madras high court has stayed the tender process for the Rs 329 crore LED Street Light Scheme in Tamil Nadu, which is a central government funding scheme.
A division bench comprising Acting Chief Justice Huluvadi G.Ramesh and Justice RMT.Teeka Raman granted the interim stay for two weeks on a Public Interest Litigation from C.Karthikeyan, a social activist, which sought to quash two conditions prescribed in the tender notification.
Petitioner's counsel R.Subburaj submitted that the state government issued a notification, inviting tender for the supply of 9.06 lakh numbers of 20W LED Street Light fitting complete set with 5 years warranty.
Section 2 of tohe notification deals with eligibility criteria of the bidders and section 3 deals with qualification of the bidders. Clause 4 of section 3 of the general condition in the tender notification was highly illegal and it will lead to irregularities in the tender.
As per this clause, the samples will be tested by the electrical department of Chennai corporation. The electrical department of Chennai corporation has no satisfactory equipments or authorization from the National Accreditation Board for Testing and Calibration Laboratories (NABL), which was the competent authority to test the samples.
Instead of sending the samples to the NABL, the authorities will send the samples to the Chennai corporation electrical department and based its report only the prospective bidder’s technical bid will be evaluated, which was highly illegal. Moreover, all the prospective bidders were already having the sample tested report from the NABL.
Therefore, the NABL tested samples cannot be tested by an incompetent authority, Subburaj added. He said Clause 5 of the notification imposes a condition that the bidder should submit proof for having satisfactorily completed similar type of work of not less 50 percent of the value of the bid under a single agreement for a State or Central government departments/boards/government undertaking/local bodies.
Only during the last tender, the government invited bids for supply of huge number of LED street lights. Therefore, except the last time successful bidders, nobody could fulfill this condition. The eligible bidders will not be able to participate due to this condition. This will lead to monopoly. Moreover, this condition was not imposed during the previous tender (2013-14 to 2015-16), he added.