Elevated corridor tenders: B-SMILE conditions may have restricted competition
The Urban Development Department cancelled tenders for Bengaluru's elevated corridors after discovering they used non-standard, hybrid contract documents. The report found that these documents included restrictive conditions that deviated from government norms and lacked necessary approvals.
Why it matters
This highlights significant governance and transparency issues in public infrastructure procurement, potentially impacting project costs and fair competition.
The tenders for Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited’s (B-SMILE) eight elevated corridors, which have now been cancelled, were based on a common template that combined provisions from two standard contract documents while also introducing additional conditions found in neither, according to the Urban Development Department’s (UDD) tender-cancellation order. The report noted that no government approval had been obtained for this hybrid or composite document.
According to the report, the tender documents combined provisions from the K/W-4 contract and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways’ (MoRTH) Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) documents, while also adding more than 10 conditions that were not part of either standard.
The report flagged key eligibility criteria that deviated from MoRTH norms, raising questions about bidding conditions and fair competition. It also highlighted inconsistencies in contractual provisions, eligibility criteria and financial requirements.
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