Times of India: Siddharth Prabhakari: Chennai: Saturday, January 20, 2018.
For issuing a Rs 5 lakh tender to revamp the website of Transtan, the state government's organ transplant authority, the official government records pertaining to tender specifications and its approval by its member secretary, have been handwritten on a piece of paper without any government emblem or letterhead, documents sourced through the Right to Information (RTI) Act shows.
The replies to an RTI also show that three companies applied for the tender which was floated in November 2016. A cursory check by anti-corruption NGO Arappor Iyakkam with the Registrar of Companies (ROC), shows that the company which has put in the second highest bid, a private company purportedly headquartered in Urapakkam, does not exist in official records. Arappor also filed the RTI with Transtan to obtain the documents.
The file noting put up to P Balaji, member secretary of Transtan, on November 5, 2016 has been written on a blank sheet of paper. The same piece of paper also has the draft work and supply order, and a noting a year later for payment of the bill amount to the selected licensee. The tender notice inviting applications was issued on the same day. Balaji said hand-written files without official letterheads were routine in the government. "We don't have a letter head so we do it this manner," he said, refusing to comment on the existence of firms which applied for the tender. "There is no irregularity in the procedure."
"The website has very few pages with dynamic content and changing it would cost around Rs 40,000-Rs 50,000. We have filed a complaint with DVAC to investigate this," said Jayaram Venkatesan, convenor of Arappor.
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