Leader of Opposition, Jai Ram Thakur had alleged the tender was cancelled as there were irregularities in tender allotment
HP State Agricultural Marketing Board (HPSAMB) has strongly rebutted the claim regarding irregularities in the process of digitization tender floated by the Board.
A Spokesperson of the HPSAMB said today that the tender process was not compromised in any way as claimed by the Leader of the Opposition.
"His statement was inaccurate and far from actual realities and the fact is that all the formalities were completed by the evaluation committee for the tender process," the Spokesman said.
He said the Board had issued a request for a proposal for the selection of system integrators for the design, development, implementation and maintenance of its integrated management system. This Request for Proposal (RFP) was issued in compliance with the announcement made by the Chief Minister in the budget speech of 2024-25.
To prepare the tender document, a Consultant for the said task was hired from HP State Electronics Development Corporation and as per the Himachal Pradesh Financial Rules -2009, a Tender Committee was constituted to evaluate, award and implement the design, development, implementation and maintenance of integrated management system.
The Spokesman said necessary formalities as mandated under the financial rules were completed for the preparation of the RFP in the document.
After the preparation of the RPF document, the Tender Committee floated the same by giving wide publicity in the leading newspapers.
The Spokesperson said the Tender Committee after floating the tender, as per the mandate evaluated the tenders and prospective bidders were finalized after allowing them to submit their representations about the requirement of mandatory documents as per the RFP document.
The Committee duly notified for the purpose after due diligence and as per the terms and conditions of the tender document invited the qualified bidders to give technical presentations as required in RFP.
He said that the committee evaluated the bidders based on technical presentation and accordingly qualified bidders as per the terms and conditions of the RFP were given The Letter of Intent (LoI) for the award of the work for the digitization process.
However, after the issuance of the LoI, the qualified bidder made representation to the tender committee to include the GST in addition to the quoted price citing that the same was not mentioned in the Bill of Quantities (BoQ).
The appropriate authority taking into consideration the representation decided that the bidders were required to quote the price for the digitization process inclusive of GST, and hence decided to rescind the tender, as the bidder failed to comply with the tender conditions as per the RFP document.
He said that in the entire tender process, all mandatory guidelines of the government and financial rules were adhered to by the evaluation committee and at no point in time the tender was awarded by taking into consideration the inclusion of the GST, as represented by the qualified bidder, as claimed in the media reports.
Moreover, the committee declined to entertain the request of the Bidder for the inclusion of the GST in the quoted price, and according to the tender was rescinded.
In the entire process the Tender Committee comprised officials drawn from the IT department and others drawn from specialized fields such as accounts, marketing, legal etc., followed the canons of financial rules in letter and spirit.
Follow us
