Tender fraud: Pilibhit civic body blacklists two contractors, firms
Representative image.
PILIBHIT
: The executive officer of the Pilibhit municipal council, Ashutosh Gupta—who also serves as the Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Pilibhit Sadar Circle—has blacklisted two civil contractor firms and two individual civil contractors for fraudulently using fixed deposit receipts (FDRs) as sureties while filing tender bids.
Acting on a report submitted by the Public Works Department's (PWD) executive engineer on May 14, Gupta initiated action against the contractors after it was found that they had submitted FDRs already pledged with other urban bodies. They uploaded these FDRs through the govt's online bidding portal, despite having used them earlier for different projects. The fraud came to light via Prahari app, used by the PWD for cross-verification.
The tenders in question were for six different civil construction works, invited by the Pilibhit municipal council on February 22 and opened on February 24. During technical bid scrutiny, the irregularities surfaced.
Gupta said contractor Shrish Pal submitted six FDRs worth Rs 3.70 lakh across four tenders. Sandhya Traders uploaded four FDRs valued at Rs 3.68 lakh. SS Enterprise and Palak Agrawal submitted one FDR each, worth Rs 1.55 lakh and Rs 57,500, respectively.
It was later confirmed that the FDRs submitted by Shrish Pal and Sandhya Traders were already pledged with the Jahanabad Town Area Committee. The FDR submitted by SS Enterprise was pledged with the Naugawan Pakariya Town Area Committee, while Palak Agrawal had reused an FDR already pledged with the Pilibhit Municipal Council for an earlier approved tender.
The matter was placed before the municipal council's tender committee, chaired by Gupta. Based on the committee's recommendations dated May 23, all four contractors were blacklisted and debarred from future dealings with the Pilibhit municipal council.
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