KHNAM MLA demands investigation into corruption in NEHU e-tendering process

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaDecember 15, 2020

KHNAM legislator from North Shillong, Adelbert Nongrum has demanded investigation into alleged corruption in the e-tendering process by the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU).

“The whole matter needs to be investigated by any government agency dealing with corruption as it is a serious damage to University’s financial integrity,” Nongrum said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

He said NEHU started the procedure of inviting tenders through E-tendering process in

May, 2018. Going by Govt of India’s norms, the work order was issued to M/s ITI limited, a

firm under Govt of India vide NEHU No.F.29/NEHU-CPPP/2017/07 dated 1.02.2018 by the Nodal Officer of NEHU. The work order cited General Financial Rules, 2017.

In the work order issued by the nodal officer to the ITI, Bengaluru, it is clearly mentioned that “One time Registration charges for Vendor/Contractor: Rs.2000.”

“Now comes the twist. While signing service contract with ITI on the non judicial stamp paper, one time registration charges for vendor is changed to Rs 2000/- per year. As a result every year a contractor applies for a work, he or she needs to pay fresh registration fee,” he said.

“In yet another twist, the tenders were to be hosted by the URL: nehu.euniwizard.com as per the signed contract, while it is hosted actually at nehu.euniwizarde.com, which belongs to “Unibrain consultancy services Private Limited” at New Delhi and is registered with “GoDaddy.com”,” he stated.

“Look at this: what a sleight of hand! nehu.uniwizard.com by a subtle manipulation becomes nehu.euniwizarde.com and gets hosted in GoDaddy.com instead of being hosted by ITI, with which NEHU signed the contract for hosting the portal for E-Tendering.

One can clearly now see where registration money paid by contractors is going. Instead of the payment coming through e-collect system to NEHU, the processing fee, instead of being collected by Government agency ITI goes to the account of M/S Unibrain Consultancy

Services Private limited, New Delhi. What could be a case worse of blatant manipulation and diversion of earnings of University than this?” he asked.

The MLA said one more very serious matter is that the manipulated URL in NEHU website for e-tendering even uses STQC logo, while it is not registered with STQC, another agency in which e- tendering portals are needed to be registered as per rules of e-tendering.

In effect, the e-tendering portal of NEHU is neither hosted by ITI, nor the fees paid goes to a

legitimate government account and as a cover up, the manipulated portal hosted by an unauthorized private agency uses even STQC logo to make it look authentic.

“Since the start of e-tendering in 2018, all the registration and selection of contractors/vendors of NEHU and all the work orders carry this virus of manipulation and possible defalcation of fees collected by an unauthorized agency to which some officials including the VC must have been complicit prima facie,” he alleged.

Contrary to government’s norms, Nongrum said NEHU does not allow access to documents of each other contractors and thereby the whole purpose of a transparent tendering process is defeated by Vice Chancellor Prof S K Srivastava and his cronies.

“The whole purpose of e-tendering is to make all the documents transparent, while NEHU follows a system where documents submitted by competitors are not uploaded in the e-portal. How shall Prof Srivastvava ensure transparency, when NEHU portal of E-Tendering is itself manipulated? How Prof Srivastava protects corrupt officers and adopts double standards?” he said.

The MLA further alleged the vice chancellor of shielding two officials of the university despite their involvement in corruption.

“In a case connected to putting non-ISI standard windows at students’ hostels by two university officials, University incurred financial loss due to the fact that value of the work included costs of ISI windows. It has been found out from admission of corrupt officials that they have put up local made windows in place of specified ISI windows,” he said.

He also asked as the university has incurred loss due to payment made for local made windows at the higher rate of ISI windows, cost of which was included in work value, shouldn’t the same money be recovered from involved officials as overpayment was permitted by these two involved officials?

“Instead of recovering the loss in this case, the University has let off two corrupt officials with a vacuous warning of sort. The question arises, what is the nexus between VC and these two corrupt officials? Do they make a syndicate?”

He said in response to the show cause issued to one of the corrupt official, the official pointed out that all the windows of the University are put in the same manner, that is, priced for ISI branded windows, while actual delivery was that of local made window. The University did not undertake any assessment of loss of (1) public funds due to overpayment and (2) did not ask the corrupt officials involved to pay back the excess payment made in all such cases.

He said this case of letting off two corrupt officials can be contrasted with the case of fining of two other erring officials of the same Engineering section who were found guilty of an overpayment of more than 1.2 Lakh rupees, for which they had to pay back the excess amount to the university.

“These two engineers made overpayment by changing some specifications like changing the quality of conduit pipe while putting electric line and also by putting smaller exhaust fans in case of stipulated bigger size ones.

The University got the overpayment recovered in this case, while in the other case of manipulation of the specified material, allowed to let go the corrupt officials with an eyewash warning, without even properly assessing the extent of excess payment, though the matter was instructed by Central Vigilance Commission.

This is not only a grave breach of conduct on the part of the Vice Chancellor by protecting corrupt officials, but also a direct complicity with a corrupt practice for which public funds are defalcated by a corrupt nexus that included VC himself. This shows the double standard of VC and protection given to select officials, in spite of their proven corruption!,” he said.