SHILLONG: A hurriedly taken pre-poll decision by the previous government to start lottery in the state has ended in smoke with the concerned department abandoning the idea in view of the pending court cases.
An official source said on Sunday that the department has shelved the lottery project.
In December last year, the High Court of Meghalaya had pointed out the faulty tender process after hearing three petitions.
The notice inviting tender issued on November 30 last for appointment of distributors of Meghalaya State Lotteries and the tender conditions issued on December 7 were found to be faulty.
The petitioners had said in Meghalaya, the state lottery had not been operational for about eight years and if at all it needs to be made operational, the distributors should only be appointed by way of a fair and non-discriminatory procedure.
The allegation was that though the notice inviting tender was issued on November 30 last, the tender conditions were supplied only on December 7 and on the other hand, the respondents proposed to receive the bids by 12 noon on December 19 and to open the technical bids at 12.30 pm on the same day itself and then, financial bids at 2 pm.
The petitioners had pointed out that the mammoth exercise of evaluation of technical bids was proposed to be completed within a matter of 90 minutes; and it appeared that the respondents were attempting to rush through the matter.
The petitioners also said the clauses 7 and 8 of the tender conditions were not only incompatible but were designed to extend undue advantage to some of the prospective bidders while causing prejudice to other bona fide bidders.
The clause 7 states that the bidder should be bona fide lottery distributor/agent/stockist of sound financial standing having sufficient) experience of at least three years in the lottery business after the introduction of the Lottery (Regulation) Act, 1998. “The experience and financial standing of directors/shareholders/partners/proprietors and others shall also be considered for allocating and evaluating the experience and financial standing of the bidder. The same shall be supported by audited financial statement for last three years duly certified by a registered chartered accountant,” said the clause.
The clause 8 states that the net worth of the bidder should not be less than Rs 10 crore as on date and for the preceding three years. “The net worth of sole proprietor/directors on board/partners/shareholders shall be considered for allocating and evaluating the net worth of the bidder. The same should be supported by net worth certificate as duly certified by the chartered accountant who audited the financial statement,” said the clause.
According to one of the petitioners, though the state authorities had invited bids from operators with three years’ experience, the competition is unfairly confined to only those bidders who have a net worth of not less than Rs 10 crore. In that regard too, the net worth of even the directors or shareholders of a company would be taken into consideration without regard to the net worth of the company itself.
Moreover, the authorities had resorted to another unfair practice by not specifying a benchmark as regards the turnover, again leaving a wide scope for arbitrariness in the tender evaluation.
