To favour particular agency, MC turns city street vending plan into rule-bending plan

Written by Hina Rohtaki :Chandigarh: Monday, June 24, 2019.

According to the documents accessed by Chandigarh Newsline, the work of carrying out the survey was given to Haryana Nav Yuva Sangam in 2016. The agency specified its address near Chaubsee ka chabutra in Rohtak.

SELECTING A firm with higher rates despite the others quoting lower rates, allotting the tender without allowing the minimum time to lapse, paying for almost three times the number of vendors registered with the administration to ramp up the final bill. These are but some of the ways in which the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation tried to favour a Haryana-based agency that carried out a survey of street vendors under the “city street vending plan”.

According to the documents accessed by Chandigarh Newsline, the work of carrying out the survey was given to Haryana Nav Yuva Sangam in 2016. The agency specified its address near Chaubsee ka chabutra in Rohtak.

It was on March 21, 2016, that the MC put out an advertisement for selecting an agency to survey registered vendors in Chandigarh. The ad clearly specified that the interested bidders could apply till April 21, 2016, but the civic officials were in such a hurry that they opened the bids on April 4 — within 15 days of issuing the ad. In the first meeting of the town vending committee on April 4, the members were informed in the morning that MC was required to select an agency to carry out a survey of vendors. At 3 pm, the officers called five agencies to give their pre-bids, even though 17 days were left for the deadline to lapse.

Of the five companies invited for the pre-bid conference, four agencies that made the first cut were M/s NF Infratech Service Private Limited, M/s Rudrabhishek Enterprise Private Limited Noida, M/s Wapcos Limited Gurgaon and M/s Haryana Nav Yuvak Sangam, as per the documents. Surprisingly, the meeting decided to exempt NGOs or government agencies from depositing the earnest money of Rs 1 lakh. Haryana Nav Yuvak Sangam, which finally qualified, happened to be the lone NGO among the contenders.