Cuttack, July 26: The civic body's problems in implementing its Solid Waste Management Project - 2016 have now ballooned into an administrative failure that has left it between the devil and the deep sea.

The civic body has drawn flak from councillors for delay in implementing the project and the consequent dismal waste management and sanitation scenario across the city.

Now, the high court has indicted it for inviting tenders for the project in a manner intended to eliminate potential bidders at the cost of causing possible losses to the exchequer. The court has also indicted it for stipulating arbitrary and unreasonable financial eligibility criteria with the intention of limiting the scope of competition to a chosen few.

At a recent municipal council meeting, the councillors had en masse demanded finalisation of the tender at the earliest, citing public resentment as a result of the persistent chaos in garbage collection.

The civic administration, however, is in a bind of its own making.

After the five-year contract with Hyderabad-based Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited for garbage collection and disposal expired in April, 2016, it granted the firm monthly contracts and started the tender process to implement the project from August. It has already cleared the technical bids of two private companies.

But the high court has now held that the financial eligibility criteria were so stringent that only four bidders could take part in the bidding. Of them, two could not even deposit the refundable earnest money deposit (EMD) and were unsuccessful in their technical bids. The two bidders that were successful in their technical bid have quoted an exorbitantly inflated price (more than double of what is being paid to Ramky now).

"Participation of only two bidders suggests that there was no fair competition. Thus, there is likelihood of huge loss of the public exchequer if fair competition is not there, which is certainly opposed to the public interest," the high court observed, while setting aside the entire tender process on July 18. The court had imposed a stay order on the process last September.

Accordingly, the high court has directed the Cuttack Municipal Corporation to issue a fresh tender notice, while fixing reasonable financial eligibility criteria, taking into consideration the nature and the scope of work to be performed. "A fresh tender for implementation of the project will be invited shortly in compliance with the high court order," municipal commissioner Bikash Mohapatra said.

The civic administration had planned a reorganisation of sanitation through implementation of the project by outsourcing solid waste management on a five-year contract after the contract with Ramky expired. But things have gone from bad to worse on the sanitation front even after 15 months.

As things stand, there is uncertainty over completion of the tender process by the end of this year following the high court's intervention against fixing Rs 60 lakh as EMD and an average annual turnover of Rs 30 crore for the past three years as eligibility criteria for bidders.

The municipal commissioner, however, said: "We will complete the tender selection process within three months with reasonable financial eligibility criteria."

"After finalisation of fresh tender for the solid waste management project, we expect to award a five-year contract with a wide range of penalty provisions to ensure that the operator which gets the contract does not work carelessly," said Ranjan Kumar Biswal, chairman of the civic body's standing committee for sanitation.