Rattled administration defends HS

CHANDIGARH: Faced with gloomy prospect of a CBI probe against home secretary Krishna Mohan and other officers, as reported by TOI on Thursday, the UT administration has defended the process, which is under the CBI's scanner now, adopted by it in awarding contract for advertisement on 417 CTU buses.
The administration issued a voluminous press note explaining in detail as to why it cancelled tenders four times before awarding it to a Delhi-based firm.Though the subject of the press note is "clarification regarding news item 'CBI seeks GOI nod for probe against HS", it has remained silent over the CBI's communication to the Centre seeking its sanction to lodge a preliminary enquiry (PE) against the home secretary and other officers.
The administration has put out the same clarifications that it had earlier conveyed to probing CBI officials, who nonetheless smelt a rat and decided to go for PE against its second-most important bureaucrat.
Sources said the administration, and its home secretary in particular, would have some fresh explanation to do to defend a decision that left the public exchequer poorer by anywhere between Rs 52 lakh and Rs 92 lakh. The administration presided over nine-month-long contract-giving process and allowed the previous contractor to continue at a price which was much lower than the bids it received earlier, causing a considerable loss of money. And this loss to public exchequer is one major ground for the CBI's case for PE against Krishna Mohan, the officer behind most of the decisions causing the delay and thus loss of money.
Vimal Grover, proprietor of Media Solutions that had participated in first two tenders, told TOI that the administration officials never seemed inclined to award contract to a firm other than Pisces Communication, the eventual contractor. "I am still willing to pay Rs 2,424 per bus per month (his bid in the second tender which was also the highest)," he said.
The administration claimed that they had to cancel the tender as they expected that a fresh tender would invite higher bids because the CTU was given exemption from paying advertisement fee to the municipal corporation. But, on the contrary, the bid prices only went down. "They had apparently made up their mind to give the contract to Pisces and invented reasons to deny it to us," Grover said.