The tender called by KMSCL last month had two bidders, HLL and M/s BVG India Ltd. One of the main pre-qualification criteria in the tender was that the bidder should have had prior experience in carrying out the entire operations of a 250-bed specialty hospital.
A technical committee which evaluated the bids pointed out that HLL met all technical requirements, while the other bidder, M/s BVG India, had experience only in running different services in different hospitals and never all services in a single hospital.
The committee recommended that site visits be conducted to assess the experience of the bidders. But the price bids were opened overruling its recommendations. When the price bids were opened, because of some errors in the bidding process, the contract could not be awarded to either party.
Lowest bidder
HLL turned out to be the lowest bidder.
“Yet, without attributing any reason, the government has chosen to cancel the entire tender. The tender process is to be started anew but the government wants HLL to renew its current O&M contract for another three months,” sources told The Hindu .
They said that if the original proposal of HLL had been accepted, the O&M would have been done at 15 per cent service charge. Now, if HLL renews the contract, the service charge would be 18 per cent.
The entire exercise has resulted in huge losses to the exchequer.
