BENGALURU: The Rs 619 crore Bengaluru Safe City project under the Nirbhaya scheme has come under a cloud with two senior IPS officers seemingly indulging in shadow-boxing. Hemant Nimbalkar, Additional Commissioner (Administration), wrote to Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar that a woman IPS officer, impersonating as the Home Secretary, had sought classified information from the company, which was drafting the tender.
Following Nimbalkar’s complaint, the Chief Secretary ordered an inquiry, headed by Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant, to probe the alleged undue illegal interference in the tender process. On December 24, the government passed an order appointing Pant as the Investigating Officer. D Roopa, IPS officer and Secretary, Prison, Crime and Auxiliary Services (PCAS), Home, tweeted that while studying the Nirbhaya/safe city project in the Home department, she found “serious irregularities in the tender document (RFP).”
According to official sources, Ernst & Young (E&Y), a multinational professional services network, had bagged the Safe City project through an open tender one-and-a-half years ago. The tender protocols involve that after completing the project, the company places it before the Technical Approval Committee to discuss and seek approval of the Request for Proposal (RFP). “Once the RFPs are approved, the project details are uploaded on the government website,” said the source.
“The company, which bags the tender uses its in-house project management consultants to design the project, given the broad requirements and specifications in the tender,” he added. In his complaint to the CS, Nimbalkar had stated that the RFP was “under preparation and was not published as on November 7, the date of conversation. It amounts to illegal interference in the tender process initiated by the Karnataka government by an unauthorised person,” he added.
Roopa, meanwhile, further tweeted that Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) had complained to the Prime Minister’s Office that the tender favoured a particular vendor. “I blew the whistle bringing this to the notice of the Chief Secretary. This even led to the Chief Secretary calling me for the next meeting. It proved that the tender document was biased and tender was even cancelled,” she claimed. According to Roopa, in her capacity as “Home Secretary, she spoke with Ernst & Young (E&Y) to get more facts to know why such biased tender was drafted by them.
She alleged that the complaint against her action appears to have been made at the behest of those benefiting from biased and unfair tenders.” “Each of my actions in this regard is to protect public interest and public money in bona fide discharge of my duties as public servant,” Roopa tweeted. On December 7, Nimbalkar had written to the Chief Secretary stating that on December 2, he had a meeting with Akshay Singhal, the management consultant for the Safe City Project. He said that Singhal wanted to know about the email communication he had with Kamal Pant on November 9 and asked about the developments related to it.
In his complaint to the CS, Nimbalkar attached the email communication. It is “self- explanatory and amounted to clear impersonation as Home Secretary to the Government of Karnataka for getting access to classified information with respect to the RFP in preparation for Safe City project worth Rs 619 crore before publication of tender for wrongful gains without any lawful authority and locus standi,” Nimbalkar had stated in his letter. The Bengaluru Safe City Project is being implemented by the Home Ministry, in collaboration with the Ministry of Women and Child Development to prevent crimes against women in public places.