HC orders issuing notices to state government, MD-MWCC

Lokmat News Network

Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar:

A public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the approval of tender quoting the highest bid instead of the lowest bid for the construction of Kolhapur Type Weirs has been filed in the Aurangabad Bench of the Bombay High Court. A panel comprising Justice Mangesh Patil and Justice Prafull Khubalkar have ordered notices to be issued to the State Government, the Managing Director (MD) of Maharashtra Water Conservation Corporation (MWCC), and the contractor M A Ambhore, who was awarded the contract. The next hearing on this petition will be held after three weeks.

What is the petition about?

The petition was filed by Akshay Kakade from Jintur through Adv. Siddheshwar S. Thombre. It stated the MWCC in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar had issued tenders for K-T weirs in the Selu and Jintur tehsils. After completing the tender process, the proposals were sent to the Managing Director of the MWCC for approval. However, according to the guidelines of the MWCC, if the tender amount exceeds Rs 5 crore, a separate tender must be issued. Since one of the two tenders exceeded Rs 5 crore, the Managing Director cancelled the tender process and directed that a new process be initiated.

Approval of the highest bid instead of the lowest

In the earlier tender process, bids from the following contractors were approved: R.S. Hivre (Pune), Nandini Construction and Manik Infra Project (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) and M A Ambhore (Jalna). Among these, Hivre's bid was the lowest, at -6.20% (below the base price). However, despite the cancellation of the previous tender process, the same officials later approved Ambhore’s bid, which was the highest at 4.95% (above the base price). This led to the filing of the PIL demanding the cancellation of the entire tender process and an investigation into the concerned officials.