By J P Gupta
New Delhi: Believe it or not but it is true. The officials of the Controller General of Accounts (CGA)have not been able to give a final, transparent shape to a tender floated last year, for reasons no one wants to discuss openly in the CGA office. The see-saw game being played by officials is still to reach a final stage.
In the process, however, all tendering norms of the government seem to be butchered apparently to favour some big players.
Controller General of Accounts (CGA) is the Principal Advisor on accounting matters to the Union Government, responsible for establishing and managing a technically sound Management Accounting System, responsible for the preparation and submission of the accounts of the Union Government and responsible for exchequer control and internal audits.
CGA had floated a tender in July last year for the procurement of 155 IT professionals for its IT project development and implementation. This tender was later canceled for unknown reasons. A fresh tender was floated in May last month wherein the number of professional to be procured was slightly increased to 158. But it had a yawning gap in other terms and conditions, much to keep the small players, MSMEs and others out of the race. (See Table below)
Highlighting the gaps in the tender process a local NGO has written a letter to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman requesting her to personally intervene in the matter.
The letter said clauses in tender like the experience of e-governance project have no relevance as this project is only for manpower thus having no co-relation of Project vs Manpower Services.
Also, the CGA has been publishing all procurement related tenders on GeM (Government eMarket Place) where this particular tender has been published on the CPP portal. GeM portal already has the Manpower services with respect to the CGA requirement.
