Make Covid kit tender conditions competitive, NGO urges Stalin

The amendments made in the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation's tender for corona relief kit does not address the real cartelisation issue, NGO Arappor Iyakkam said on Tuesday.
On Monday, Arappor Iyakkam's Convenor Jayaram Venkatesan has written to Chief Minister M.K. Stalin to go for e-tender for procurement of 2.11 crore corona relief grocery kits to save hundreds of crore and also enable more bidders to participate.

He also suggested measures to make the tender more competitive.

Venkatesan said this short tender is worth close to Rs 837 crore as per Ration Department's estimate based on retail price of Amutham Departmental Stores belonging to the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation.

Subsequently the Tamil Nadu government altered the tender conditions making it an e-tender, having online payment of earnest money deposit (EMD), allowing experience of supplying to private institutions, and reducing the offered quantity to 20 per cent.

Welcoming the changes, Venkatesan said the most important change requested, that is, floating the tender as district wise e-tenders, along with 20 per cent offered quantity, has not been done.

The tender in this form is heavily loaded in favour of one particular group, he claimed.


"It must be remembered and understood that in the same Civil Supplies Department, more than 10 bidders used to participate in bids of sugar until 2018, palmolein until 2017 and 'dal' until 2015," he added.

According to him, after that the tender norms were changed to favour one particular group.

"Unless, there is a concerted effort to move back to earlier tender conditions, bringing in other bidders by making other small and medium players eligible for the tender, we will not see changes in the bidding pattern. The earlier condition prevalent in civil supplies tenders such as allowing even bidders who did not meet the financial condition to participate by paying additional security deposits are ways to bring in many prospective bidders," Venkatesan added. - IANS