State government to move SC to defend Munde’s controversial food tenders

MUMBAI: The state government has decided to move the Supreme Court to defend the contentious take home rations tenders, worth Rs 6,300 crore (for seven years), issued

MUMBAI: The state government has decided to move the Supreme Court to defend the contentious take home rations tenders, worth Rs 6,300 crore (for seven years), issued in March this year by the Pankaja Munde-led women and child development department.

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The state’s move comes after the law and judiciary department said it can challenge the HC order that had quashed an important clause for these tenders — effectively asking the department to re-tender contracts. In July this year, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay HC had set aside a clause that reduced blocks for giving contracts to 70 from the earlier 553.

The court said this went against the SC’s directive of decentralisation in earlier orders

(see box ). “The law and judiciary department has opined we can challenge the HC order on merit. We also want to move SC to get clarity on the matter, as there are conflicting judgements. While one judgement in a 2011 case sets high hygiene standards, calling for avoiding manual interface in producing the take home rations (THR), another calls for greater decentralisation. Both are inherently contradictory. We had decentralised the process, keeping hygiene and safety criteria in mind,” said a senior minister, not wishing to be named.

Munde’s department stands accused of favouring big contractors instead of local self-help groups, by increasing tender size and setting conditions such as mandatory extrusion technology and in-house labs, conditions that will weed out self-help groups.

Munde, however, insisted her department’s focus is on providing hygienic food and the tender was worked out after surveying eligible candidates, which were not more than 70. The HC had also upheld all the other tender conditions. THR — part of the Centre’s Integrated Child Development Scheme — has been controversial in Maharashtra because, in the past, the entire process has been fudged to favour a few contractors who were given back door entries as women self-help groups. A stinging report from the SC commissioners office in 2009 indicted the state for an unholy nexus between officials, contractors and politicians.

HT had reported in July all three indicted contractors had been listed as eligible this year.

The reports pointed out how the department ignored the report from SC Commissioner’s office in May 2015 saying the Shagun Manila mandal case in 2011 was being interpreted wrongly.