Telangana HC reserves orders on ASI contract worth Rs 5.61 crore

HYDERABAD: Justice K Laxman of the Telangana High Court on Thursday reserved his orders on a petition filed by D Ravinder Reddy, owner of Ravi Press Photo, challenging the contract worth Rs 5,61,68,000 granted to M/s Giopel Import-Export Pvt. Ltd. by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on July 5, 2022.  

Appearing for the petitioner, advocate Pothina Prem Kumar claimed that the ASI had broken all rules before awarding contracts by using nominations rather than the GeM (Government eMarket Place) Portal route, which was the mandatory method for sou-rcing goods and services for all government departments.
Prem Kumar argued that the Giopel (PIQL), to which the high-value contract was awarded, did not exist in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) records. Additionally, a shell company by the name of Giopel Import-Export Pvt. Ltd., without ‘PIQL’ in the MCA records, is an indebted entity that is neither technically nor financially qualified to carry out such a work order.

Strangely, a previous tender that had been called for Rs 1.50 crore for digitisation of 74,000 Estampages was unexpectedly withdrawn to make room for the high value contract to Giopel (PIQL) by nomination, which was for Rs 5,61,68,000 to digitise 1 lakh Estampages, the court was told. The petitioner moved court seeking its intervention and direction to the Central Vigilance Commission to conduct an investigation.