High Court stays Rs. 7 crore road construction project

COURT TAKES STERN VIEW OF AWARD OF WORK WITHOUT DUE PROCESS
GANGTOK, 01 Apr: The High Court of Sikkim has taken a stern view of the manner in which the contract for a road construction work in the East District was handled by the State government, particularly the Roads & Bridges Department. The Court has termed the awarding of the work by the Department as “illegal and arbitrary”, and in the process, has also stayed further execution of the project.
This order of the High Court came in the last week of March, 2012 on a petition filed by Delay Namgyal Barfungpa who has drawn the Department for Development of North East Region (DoNER), the North Eastern Council (NEC) as well as the state government and the Roads & Bridges department to the court in his petition.
The project is the Sangkhola-Sumin Road construction which the Cabinet had sanctioned for Rs. 7,08,46,979 some months back. The construction was sanctioned under a Central government scheme for the NE Region.
Chief Justice P Kohli observed that it was “absolutely clear” that the respondent contractor had been allotted two different contracts without advertisements. The two works included upgradation and premix carpeting, including protective & drainage works, on Sangkhola Sumin Road, 1st km to 5th km, and the new cutting, including pavement works, carpeting, protective works, on Sangkhola Sumin Road from 6th km to 12th km. Only the latter work was advertised. This contract had been awarded to the respondent contractor.
However, the Court noted that before the said contractor could commence the work allotted to him, it was found that the said work had already been advertised and allotted by the department to another agency under a different scheme of the Central government. Thereafter, the officials decided to execute the work on another stretch of land for construction of the road along with Sangkhola Sumin Road from KM 15 to KM 19 and still another work comprising 3 kms of road from Sangkhola Sumin to Mangthan.
It was noted by the Chief Justice that both these works are totally different contracts. The plea of the state respondents that this was not a new contract, and that only the alignment in the road had been changed was rejected by the Court.
In fact, the Court further noted that the allotment of the two different works to the respondent contractor without advertisement is prima facie arbitrary and illegal action on the part of the department and has ordered a stay on further execution of the works by the respondent contractor.
Earlier, the Court had demanded from the State government whether formal agreement had been executed between the department and the contractor to whom the work had been allotted. Also demanded was information on the amount of work done so far, amount of bills paid to the contractor along with a certificate from the engineer in charge of the work as to how much works had been executed and the amount of payments made and also the progress report submitted to the NEC.
With the documents made available, it was observed that work to the tune of Rs. 46,39,880 out of the total cost had been executed, which comes to only 6.5%. This submission was made by Additional AG, JB Pradhan, who also sought that the court permit re-tendering of the work by the department, if so desired. This was granted.
Appearing for the petitioner was advocate Sudesh Joshi and Manita Pradhan.