Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot told The Indian Express that yet another fresh tender will be floated within a week. The Delhi Cabinet had cleared the project — a key poll promise of the AAP — in July 2017.The Delhi government’s project to equip public buses in the capital with three CCTV cameras each as well as GPS has failed to go past the tender stage for the second time in six months, officials have said.
Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot told The Indian Express that yet another fresh tender will be floated within a week. The Delhi Cabinet had cleared the project — a key poll promise of the AAP — in July 2017.
The previous two tenders were floated in November 2018 and earlier this year. Both tenders failed as companies that made bids did not qualify the parameters set by the government in terms of expertise, experience, among others.
The tender document stated that the bidders shall need to have an average turnover of “minimum Rs 200 crore for last three financial years 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18” and should have carried out at least one project worth Rs 70 crore, or two projects worth Rs 40 crore each or three projects worth Rs 20 crore each.
“We will be floating a fresh tender in a week to 10 days. The previous one failed due to technical reasons,” Gahlot said. Transport department sources said the possibility of getting all buses equipped with these crucial safety features anytime soon now “appears low” as it would take at least eight to nine months to complete the project.
“The issues that are cropping up every time has to do with faulty decision-making during the bid design and pre-bid meetings. Prospective bidders usually point them out during the pre-bid meetings,” a senior official said.
The roadblock also jeopardises the AAP’s promise to make public transport in the city safer, especially for women. The proposal to make bus and Metro commute free for women has also been projected as a step towards safer public spaces for women.
In June 2017, when the Delhi Cabinet had approved the CCTV proposal, a statement was issued saying Rs 140 crore from the Nirbhaya fund, a corpus formed by the Centre after the 2012 Delhi gangrape, would be used to execute the project. But later, citing lack of approval from the Centre, the AAP government had unilaterally gone ahead.
The installation of GPS was also clubbed with the CCTV tender. Currently, only 200 out of around 5,500 odd buses in the city have CCTVs fitted in them as part of a pilot project.
According to the failed tender, three IP-based CCTVs were to be installed in every bus and a display screen was supposed to telecast the output.
The feed would be accessed and viewed in real time from a control centre set up by the transport department.
