In a welfare state all the Government Ministries, Departments, Agencies, Statutory Corporations and Public Sector Undertakings in the Centre and the States, Municipal Corporations and other local bodies and even by private Public Sector Undertakings (hereinafter called government agencies) providing public services in very wide scale . While providing service by government agencies, they incur huge expenditure through public procurements which can be defined as the procurement of goods, works and services by government agencies in very wide scale. The estimate of public procurement as per preface of Public Procurement Bill 2011 is simply enormous and estimates vary between 15 to 20 per cent of GDP or about Rs. 12 to 15 lakh crore per annum in case of India.
The process used by government’s agencies for Public Procurement can be categorized in three distinct Stages-
a. Pre-tender Stage
(Project formulation, Appointment of Consultants, Preparation of Detailed Project report/ Detailed Estimate)
b. Tender Stage
(Preparation of tender documents, inviting & opening of tenders, prequalification, tender evaluation & award of work)
c. Execution Stage
(Compliance of agreement conditions, making payments, ensuring quality & timely completion)
The pre-qualification criterion is a yardstick to allow or disallow firms to participate in the bids. The pre-qualification criteria acts like a filter and by varying the criteria selection of contractor (company/individual/firms) can be varied accordingly. In this regards the question that come to my mind is when government is incurring expenditure of about Rs. 12 to 15 lakh crore per annum through public procurement then why the wealth distribution and consequently public participation is skewed i.e. limited to very few individuals .
The skewed public participation is due to fact that government agencies not incorporating educational bid in their tender. Almost in all the tender made by government agencies specifying the criteria in which only experienced firm/company/individual having sufficient financial capability or experience can able to bid . By this method once a company/firm/individual being selected, they are continuously getting selected which is prejudicially affecting the new company/firm/individual. The individual/association/companies which are already doing government work getting the work of government agencies continuously and getting their wealth increased day by day. A non experienced individual or new company, firm or association whether incorporated or not are finding it is impossible to getting selected for carrying out government agencies work.
As observed by CVC the prequalification clause in the tender documents of government agencies skewed for experienced and big companies ,association and influencing individual only and also it has been observed during intensive examination of various contracts by CVC that the prequalification criteria is either not clearly specified or made very stringent / very lax to restrict/facilitate the entry of competent/incompetent bidders .
Because of this lacuna in public procurement system the public procurement work of India is concentrated within a few individuals/company/firms only which is prejudicially affecting the equitable distribution of wealth as envisaged in Article -39 (b) and 39(d) of the constitution mentioned below.
39. The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing—
b) that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as best to subserve the common good;
(c) that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment;
Therefore public procurement which is important source of distribution of wealth and generation of indirect employment is concentrated between few companies, associations and individuals only. Presently the government is in the process of bringing a bill namely Public Procurement Bill in the parliament which also silent about uniform distribution of work and how to allow new entrants in the field.
CONCLUSION
It is therefore required that government should make it mandatory that while government agencies going for procurement they should invariably incorporate educational bid except cases which required high skill or new technology so that new entrants get chance and there shall be uniform distribution of wealth as envisage in Aritcle-39 (b) and 39(d) of the constitution.
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Tags :Civil Law