Questions over Rs 68 crore KPTCL tender to one bidder

State-owned Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd (KPTCL) has awarded a tender to a company that was the only bidder to implement an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system costing Rs 68 crore amid protests by a major software firm and a complaint to the chief minister.

This has raised questions over the manner in which the tender was finalised, but Energy Minister V Sunil Kumar maintained that due process was followed. In May this year, KPTCL published a request for proposal (RFP) on ‘Selection of System Integrator for Supply, Installation, Commissioning, Implementation and Support for ERP System’.

On July 13, KPTCL issued clarifications and amendments to the tender conditions. A Fortune Global 500 company wrote multiple emails to KPTCL raising flags on the way in which the tender was being handled.

DH has seen these emails and the name of the company is being withheld to protect the identity of the people involved. In its first email on July 27, the company expressed its willingness to participate in the bid process.

It sought the bid submission date to be extended till August 22 as it had other tender-related engagements at the time. On August 3, it wrote another email to KPTCL expressing shock that the bid submission deadline was not extended. The company said it was a leader in ERP and urged KPTCL not to consider the lone bid received from a firm that “has never implemented ERP” in any public sector undertaking.

It requested KPTCL to republish the RFP and create a “level playing field” for other organisations. On September 13, the company again wrote to KPTCL insisting that the RFP should be republished to invite fresh bids.

The matter reached Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s office on September 19 via email by a whistleblower. “The RFP is drafted with such mala fide intention that the very large qualified global system integrators like L&T Infotech, Birlasoft, Accenture, Infosys and Wipro don’t qualify,” the whistleblower stated. The company that bagged the ERP tender “has never done a project of this magnitude and complexity”, the whistleblower said, urging Bommai to “stop such abuse of public funds and procurement compliances”.

According to Kumar, this was the third tender floated for ERP. “On all three occasions, there was a single bid. According to our rules, we can award the tender to a single bidder on the third occasion. In fact, we could have done it the second time. Still, we floated the tender for the third time,” Kumar said. There is also talk of quid pro quo and the involvement of Kumar’s family relative, which the minister denied. “None of my family members interferes in administrative matters,” he said.