New Delhi: Recently asked to step down from the post of University Grants Commission (UGC) Secretary, IAS officer Raju Sharma is going out but not without starting a fire. Sharma alleges that this step was taken because he was against certain projects like the e-governance project, which has been given to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
UGC Chairman Sukhdeo Thorat’s brainchild, the project was awarded to TCS last month.
Starting with the haste in which the contract was awarded, UGC hired Haselfree Consultants on February 1, 2007 to prepare a Request for Proposal document to invite bidders.
The document was ready by February 20. However, contrary to practice, the UGC put out advertisements inviting tenders on February 12 before the Request for Proposal document was ready.
Wipro and TCS were shortlisted for the project, but while Wipro’s bid was substantially lower, the contract went to TCS which says it was a fair fight.
All TCS Vice President, Tanmoy Chakrabarty had to say on the subject was: “May the best company win. There were no discrepancies. We just made a better bid.”
Wipro filed a complaint with the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). The HRD Ministry too objected saying: “The proposal lacks essential details like scope of work, calculation details and intended income.”
The CVC directed the UGC to reply within three months and when it did, the CVC picked holes in the reply saying: “Simply grading TCS as very good and Wipro as good (by the UGC) is without any convincing analysis.”
The UGC replied to CVC’s objections in January, 2008. This time, CVC passed the replies through, even though UGC had still not given any substantial explanation.
So why was the UGC in such a hurry to go ahead with this, and how did all CVC’s objections disappear when the project was eventually awarded to TCS a month ago?
None of the people who wrote letters of dissent to the UGC were ready to make any statements on the subject and If this is a step to put India on the global map as far as e-governance is concerned, then its surely a bad start.