A day after a British court was told that a number of unnamed officials or agents of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation were involved in a bribery scam, the former DMRC Managing Director, E. Sreedharan, has responded saying that “there are very many tiers, individuals and agencies involved [in the tendering process] and the decision cannot be influenced by bribing one or two individuals.”
Spelling out the procedure by which DMRC floats tenders and finalises the contracts, Dr. Sreedharan said that the Corporation “has a strict policy of not allowing any intermediaries to our office. Tenderers are not allowed to communicate or get in touch with any DMRC officials during tender finalisation.”
He added: “The story does not therefore hold water. If at all bribe has been paid, it must have been to individuals outside DMRC with a view to siphon back the amount to individuals of Alstom network, U.K.”
Dr. Sreedharan said DMRC had a very structured and transparent procedure for finalising all contracts and during the year 2000-2006 it had a team of General Consultants headed by PCI (Pacific Consultants International) of Japan to assist it in all areas. The tender papers were prepared by them, tenders received and processed by them and sent to DMRC for acceptance.
He said: “Tenders are generally considered in two stages. First there is a pre-qualification of intending tenderers. The General Consultants process the pre-qualification papers and send their recommendations to DMRC. DMRC has then an appraisal Committee consisting of HODs who scrutinise these recommendations and put up to a tender committee consisting of Directors. The tender committee puts up their recommendations to the M.D. and after his acceptance papers are sent to JICA, the lending agency, for scrutiny and clearance.”
“The next stage is invitation of financial bids from the pre-qualified tenderers. The same process and procedure is followed while evaluating the financial bids and the same is again sent to JICA for scrutiny and clearances,” he concluded.
