Nagpur, India: The Satranjipura zone of Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC), which frequently struggles with a lack of funds to provide basic civic amenities, is awarding civil contracts that result in significant financial losses for the NMC.

Between January 1 and the end of September this year, the Satranjipura zone spent ₹1.44 crores on tasks such as repairing sewer chambers, covers, and painting, all under the civil works category, without adhering to a transparent tender process.

Zone officials, who could have easily consolidated these tasks to allow for an online tendering process, bypassed it, allegedly favoring a specific group of contractors.

The total amount was split into 50 smaller contracts, with over 26 of these awarded to just four contractors. The reason for this preferential treatment by the officials remains unclear.

This preferential treatment by the officials has resulted in a minimum loss of ₹25 lakh to the NMC. According to State PWD guidelines, any civil work exceeding ₹10 lakh must be mandatorily tendered on Mahatender, the state’s official tender portal. These guidelines were introduced to eliminate the old syndicate system, where contractors would form groups to prearrange and divide civil work among themselves, bypassing fair competition.

This system is detrimental to the state’s finances as it stifles competition, fosters collusion between government officials and contractors, lowers the quality of work, and encourages corruption.

The state implemented this law to grant officials the emergency authority to carry out projects under ₹10 lakh on their own, as the online tendering process can be time-consuming.

It is alleged that officials in the Satranjipura zone have exploited this emergency clause by breaking down large civil projects costing tens of lakhs into smaller portions under ₹10 lakh, which were then awarded to their preferred contractors.

Tasks such as repairing sewage chambers and their covers, which could easily be bundled into a single tender, have instead been split into 36 smaller tenders, each costing between ₹2.90 lakh and ₹3 lakh.

In the end, this approach cost the NMC ₹1.05 crore, whereas, if the work had been tendered online, it could have resulted in an average bid discount of 15 to 20 percent, leading to significant savings of public money. The next set of contracts involves general repairs of schools, public toilets, community halls, and more.

It is important to note that this work mainly involves painting and minor repairs, such as flooring, of the properties. Although the total cost of this work is ₹38.39 lakh if unified, it has been divided into 14 separate contracts, each costing less than ₹10 lakh.

The contractors who benefited the most are M/s Sunil Parate, who received four separate contracts for the same work of repairing and building manhole chambers; Vansh Enterprises, which was awarded four contracts for similar repair work, two for RCC covers, and one for a manhole; and Asmi Construction, which secured three contracts for manhole repairs, two for RCC covers, and two for general repairs.