SHILLONG, Sep 20: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has accused the National People’s Party-led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance government of “conniving” with the contractors assigned the construction of the Meghalaya Assembly building at Mawdiangdiang.
The under-construction building hogged the limelight when the 70-tonne central dome collapsed on May 22, following which an Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati (IITG) team conducted an audit. The team attributed the collapse of the “ill-designed” and “dead weight” dome to the lack of coordination among the designer, contractor and the project monitoring committee.
TMC national spokesperson Saket Gokhale wrote to PWD (Buildings) Minister Dasakhiatbha Lamare on Tuesday, stating that Badri Rai and Company and Shiva Enterprise were declared disqualified bidders for the construction of the Assembly building. But the Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam Ltd (UPRNNL), which was finally selected to construct the building, “subcontracted the construction work to both the disqualified contractors”.
In his letter, Gokhale said the tender for the construction of the new Meghalaya Assembly was floated in 2018 and the dome of the same building collapsed on May 22, 2022.
Quoting bid documents, the TMC national spokesperson said there were four bidders for the contract and the technical evaluation revealed Badri Rai and Company “did not fulfil the qualifying criteria of having successfully completed similar works during the last 7 years of key government buildings with a dome or similar architectural feature and the minimum criteria of bank solvency certificate/ overdraft facilities/ credit limit issued from a nationalised bank of at least 20% of the estimated cost of the project put to tender”. Shiva Enterprise was disqualified for failing to “submit hard copies of the technical bid”.
According to the TMC leader, the two companies took the subcontract route to be involved in the Assembly project after UPRNNL, which was awarded the construction work. The UPRNNL claims on its website that it does not subcontract work, but its “blatant lie was exposed” through an RTI application, he said.
Alleging that the MDA government is hand in glove with the inept contractors, the TMC said neither Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma nor the PWD (Buildings) Department summoned UPRNNL, the main contractor after the IITG team submitted its report on the dome collapse.
The TMC also said the initial tender value for the construction of the Assembly building was Rs 105 crore and the Meghalaya government had prepared a budget estimate of Rs 145 crore. But UPRNNL quoted Rs 127 crore, about Rs 18 crore lower than the estimated amount.
The latest estimated cost of the project stands at Rs 177.7 crore.
