The ministry of external affairs may have been bitten by the outsourcing bug, but a parliamentary standing committee panel has questioned the ministry’s system of awarding contracts for distribution of Indian visas to private companies, asserting that it was “not suitable to maintain uniformity and transparency”.
At present, over 72 Indian embassies, consulates and high commissions have outsourced their visa section to private companies, in order to free limited manpower. Visa outsourcing is the first sector where MEA went into partnership with private companies in a big way, much before its mega passport seva project with TCS.
But, with different missions individually handling tenders for giving the contract, there had been concerns voiced about lack of monitoring, as well as possibility of surfeit of legal problems.
“In the committee’s view, the present arrangement is not suitable to maintain uniformity and transparency in the system,” said the parliamentary standing committee in its report tabled on August 26.
In fact, overruling the ministry’s objection, the committee said that a separate sub-division should be created to build “in-house capacity” as the outsourcing has multiple aspects – legal, financial, diplomatic and security.
“This would subsequently facilitate minute examination of the documents as well as ensure uniformity of approach and procedure across all the establishments abroad,” said the panel.
This is not the first time that the panel has suggested the carving out of a separate department to deal with outsourcing, since the number of Indian missions giving out their visa work will only increase in the future.
But with the ministry already having limited manpower and under financial stress, a new division was not considered feasible, so far.
“Considering the volume of work and the mechanism to deal with the matter available with ministry, the concept for a separate cell for dealing with outsourcing matters was not considered earlier,” MEA had said in its reply.
With the parliamentary panel putting a lot of emphasis on this suggestion, the ministry said that the “matter is being considered separately from the administrative and financial angles as the creation of a cell would involve additional expenditure and additional staff”.
Besides, the ministry will also now be issuing comprehensive standard operating procedures for awarding of outsourcing contract. “The committee can now expect that the comprehensive Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) is compiled by the ministry in a time-bound manner and if required, the ministry may amend the circulars in view of its experiences so far,” observed the parliamentary panel.
In a previous report published in May, the panel had pointed out even while making stringent rules, “paramouncy had to be given to security concerns”.
Interestingly, the ministry pointed out that “only peripheral work” was given to outsourcing companies, with all policy and security matters handled from New Delhi. “Further as per extant guidelines, only Indian/Indian origin companies are eligible to take part in the tender process as the principal company with or without a local partner of Indian/foreign origin,” the ministry noted.