Image source: Hemant Nimbalkar IPS (@IPSHemant) Twitter
Bengaluru: Close on the heels of Karnataka Home Secretary D Roopa alleging that there have been irregularities in the tender called for Safe City project and that IPS officer Hemant Nimbalkar was trying to favour a private company, the latter has refuted the allegations.
The Bengaluru Safe City Project or the Nirbhaya Project intends to have 7,500 cameras and other surveillance measures as a means of crime prevention against women and children in the city.
Nimbalkar, on Sunday said that the tender process for the multi-core Safe City project was not biased.
“There is no bidder (for the project) at the moment since the final date (for submission of bids) is January 8. After the bid submission, technical bids will be opened and quality and cost will be considered. Then pre-qualification and technical qualification will be checked and they will be asked to give a proof of concept. The BEL did not compete in Call 1 as a bidder. Three bidders who came forward did not qualify beyond the pre-qualification process and were not considered for the technical qualification process. So there is no question of bias coming here. Then in Call 2, three companies qualified in June – Larsen & Tourbo, Matrix and BEL. BEL’s bid was accepted,” Nimbalkar is quoted in The News Minute.
He said that the tender committee, which he heads decided not to consider the Chinese-made products and hence canceled the second tender.
Hemant Nimbalkar is the chairman of both the Tender Inviting Committee and the Tender Scrutiny Committee for the project. He was ealier chargesheeted by the Central Bureau of Investigation in the multi-crore IMA Ponzi scheme case.
