By Our Reporter
Shillong: The state agriculture department incurred an extra expenditure of Rs 2.60 crore by awarding contracts to firms that had quoted higher rates for supply of bamboo and agar planting materials, despite their failure to submit requisite documents.
The department also extended undue favour to the firms by issuing supply orders even where they did not bid for a particular species.
According to the CAG report 2018, the agriculture department issued financial sanction (2014-15 to 2016-17) for implementation of the scheme ‘Organic plantation of Bamboo and Agar for sustainable livelihood towards sustainable ecology’. The Director of Horticulture issued notice inviting tenders (June 2015) for supply of ‘Planting Material of Bamboo (PMB) and Planting Material of Agar (PMA).
As per the terms and conditions of the tender, the bids were to be supported by technical literature/ brochure of the Bamboo/ Agar species; copy of income tax and sales tax documents; proof of satisfactory execution of previous orders; certificate of incorporation proprietorship; self-attested certificate to ensure that the company/ firm meets the eligibility criteria; and trading license in case of a non-tribal.
In response to the tender, 19 firms submitted bids for supply of PMB and 20 firms submitted bids for supply of PMA. The Tenders Committee of the Horticulture Department (July 2015) rejected the bids of 13 and 16 firms which had tendered for PMB and PMA respectively, due to their failure to support their bids with all the relevant documents listed in the tender.
The report added that audit scrutiny (October 2018) of records of the Director of Horticulture revealed that not only the rejected firms, but none of them had submitted all the relevant documents listed in it.
Out of the rejected bids, two firms had quoted the lowest (L-l) rate for supply of PMB and one firm had quoted the L-1 for supply of PMA.
Between August 2015 and July 2017, the department procured 12.60 lakh units of five bamboo species from four firms at a cost of Rs 5.29 crore at L-2 and L-3 rates and Rs 9.60 lakh units of planting material of Agar from three firms at a cost of Rs 3.32 crore at L-2 rate. Since the firms with lowest price bid were disqualified, the Department incurred an extra expenditure of Rs2.60 crore on purchase of PMB (Rs 1.58 crore) and PMA (Rs 1.02 crore) from firms that had also not fulfilled all the eligibility criteria.
It also stated that the decision of the Committee to reject the bids of the firms that had offered the lowest rates on the ground that some of the documents listed in the tender were not submitted, and selecting firms which had also failed to submit the requisite documents and have quoted higher rates, or not quoted at all, had not only violated the principle of providing a level playing field, but has also resulted in the Department incurring an extra expenditure of Rs 2.60 crore.
The action of the Department in selecting firms for supply of planting material at higher rates and procurement of certain material from firms though they had not submitted bids for the same, calls for investigation by Vigilance Department and fixing of responsibility for causing loss to the State Government, the report said.