Bangalore Mirror: Bangalore: Tuesday,
August 09, 2016.
The Tender SURE
project has been mired in controversies from the beginning. Project proponents
have been dismissive of allegations, and the entire process has remained
shrouded in secrecy. An investigation by Bangalore Mirror and a set of
documents procured through RTI reveals that the.
When
controversies erupted over the Tender SURE project of the Karnataka government
that sought to re-engineer major roads of Bengaluru, most of those were
dismissed as conspiracy theories of activists or simply as fertile imagination
of habitual detractors of "developmental" projects.
A set of
documents, procured individually under provisions of the Right to Information
(RTI) Act, however indicate that most allegations against the state government right
from the decision to undertake such a project to its eventual implementation were
true. Bangalore Mirror is in possession of the documents.
The papers
reveal the arbitrary manner in which the project was approved by then Chief
Minister DV Sadananda Gowda, the whimsical way in which roads were selected and
amounts earmarked, the methods that were used to bypass an elected urban local
body, how private parties were allowed to dictate terms to government
officials, and the means that were used to ensure that "arm's length"
principles were not followed in the long-drawn tendering process. The last one
summarises what critics had been alleging all along: a flagrant violation of
rules and utter disregard for due processes.
The Tender SURE
term entered the city's vocabulary following a meeting that Sadananda Gowda had
with five members of City Connect on September 16, 2011. The delegation
"emphasized the need for urgency to address the inadequacy and sub-optimal
quality of urban roads in Bengaluru and other cities in Karnataka which was
causing a rapid deterioration in the living standards across social strata and
was introducing huge friction points which was to the detriment of trade and
industry". The opening statements were made by Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw,
chairperson and managing director of Biocon Limited, but she was present as a
member of the Bengaluru chapter of City Connect.
Ramesh
Ramanathan, co-founder of the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy,
presented a two-volume document, and it was decided that "TenderSURE
standards" would be the template based on which the state government would
take up design, procurement and execution of city roads. It was also decided
that the government order for initiating the project would be ready in two
weeks by October 2, and that those would be done through the private public
partnership (PPP) mode.
Even though
Ramanathan was present at the meeting on behalf of City Connect, subsequent
government documents mention India Urban Space Foundation (IUSF). IUSF was
established in 2007 as a non-profit, and later became the Jana Urban Space Foundation
(Jana USP, for short), headed by the other Janaagraha co-founder Swati
Ramanathan.
The minutes
have no record of any intention to take the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike
(BBMP) into confidence even though the project was to take off from Bengaluru.
Though BBMP commissioner HS Siddaiah was present at the meeting, the mayor was
not. The meeting was attended by 15 people, all of who were either government
officials or members of City Connect. Gowda agreed to "set aside" Rs
75-100 crore for 25 "model" roads in the capital, and an equal number
in other cities of the state. Three months later, it was decided that the costs
would be shared equally by the government and the Palike.
When no
one was sure of anything
It took a
year for the process to be set rolling. The tender for the upgradation of seven
roads at a cost of Rs 67.64 lakh was announced on December 6, 2012 through the
e-procurement portal of the BBMP. The intervening period is a story in itself
that will elaborated later in this series.
But before
the deadline of February 2, 2013, the city-based RNS Infrastructure Ltd sought
for a modification of the qualification criteria. The tender had stipulated
that an applicant should have been a prime contractor for a similar project
earlier. RNS Infrastructure requested for the criteria be extended to a
sub-contractor for such a project; this plea was rejected. The other
communication during the bidding process came from Chennai-based NAPC Ltd which
requested for an extension of the deadline to February 28, 2013.
Instead,
another tender was announced on March 5, and the project amount was revised to
Rs 71.80 lakh.
While two
other companies also participated in the pre-bid, NAPC was disqualified since
it did not possess requisite certificates.
A third
tender was called for on June 21, wherein the project was split into two components:
Rs 61.07 lakh for six roads and Rs 10.91 lakh for Cunningham Road. The deadline
was set for July 23.
Becoming
sure of a tender
This is where
the process took a turn. On July 11, Nithya Ramesh, urban design associate with
the IUSF sent a mail to Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw saying that NAPC may not
participate again in the tender. Ramesh wrote, "I requested him (an
official of NAPC) to bid for the tender and said that if they were the only
bidders like last time, they would be awarded the work in all probability."
A copy of the mail was marked to then BBMP commissioner Rajneesh Goel, and the
same has been procured under RTI.
Six days
later, as if on cue, NAPC asked for a modification of the qualification
criteria, along the same lines as RNS Infrastructure had earlier. NAPC remained
the lone bidder, and the tender evaluation committee on August 1 found that the
company was "qualified" for both the sub-projects of the tender. The
earlier disqualification was not taken into account, and no reasons for the
waiver of the requisites were announced either. Moreover, the specifications
that were waived for NAPC were incidentally the same under which the
application of RNS Infrastructure had been rejected in the first round.
Interestingly,
Swati Ramanathan was a member of the tender committee. None of the documents in
the entire chain mention why a private entity, especially an interested party,
could have been a member of an official panel. What is also not mentioned in
any of these documents is that NAPC chief executive Varun Manian is associated
with Chennai City Connect. This entity and Bangalore City Connect are both
chapters of City Connect, which describes itself as "a collaborative
platform catalysed by business for civil society and government to work
together to make cities more liveable".
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