Hyderabad: The Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) has awarded several contracts worth crores of rupees to its favourite vendors without calling for any tenders in the last IPL season. All norms have been violated and no transparency was maintained for the World Cup matches and other ties that took place in Hyderabad in the last cricketing season.
Sources in the HCA said that more than Rs 10 to Rs 15 crore worth works have been awarded to the vendors without following the due process after Jagan Mohan Rao took over as the HCA president. The bye-laws of the HCA clearly state that a Tender Committee must be constituted to find out the lowest bidder who fulfils all the norms. However, the HCA did not call for tenders for the supply of food and beverages, transport services, tent material, power, sports material and many other requirements. The cricket association also did not step up a transparent tender committee.
Opposing unfair practices being followed in the association, HCA joint secretary T. Basava Raju wrote an open letter to the HCA president alleging that the apex council was never taken into confidence while awarding the contracts to the vendors.
“Only after calling the Apex Council meeting and taking approval from the members, the work contracts must be given to vendors, states the bye-laws of the HCA. Though the Apex Council is the governing body of HCA, its meeting was hardly called to take approvals. Even the Annual General Meeting agenda was passed without the approval of Apex Council.”
However, the HCA floated tenders recently for small-ticket items like men’s and women’s clothing material for different tournaments, which costs peanuts. Even for these items, the HCA picked up the vendors as per the choice of a few individuals as there was no full-fledged tender committee. The tenders section of the HCA website hardly functions as the information is kept away from public domain at most of the times, said a source.
Many vendors, who worked for HCA in the past, approached courts to get their dues cleared as they are not on ‘good’ terms with the current management. A vendor involved in transport services got a favourable verdict recently from the Telangana High Court for a work that he carried out in 2022-23. A few other vendors too moved courts to get their pending dues from the HCA cleared.
