The Andhra Pradesh government, headed by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, which has been overturning one policy after another introduced by the previous Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy government, has decided to scrap yet another policy.
The state cabinet, chaired by Naidu on Wednesday, decided to do away with the reverse tendering system introduced by the Jagan government in 2019 for executing various government projects.
Under the reverse tendering system, contractors would make online bids for projects by quoting a certain price. In this process, bidding starts with the highest possible price and gradually decreases, with the lowest bidder winning the project.
State Information and Public Relations Minister Kolusu Parthasarathy stated that the state government will now revert to the old and standard process of calling tenders for various projects, as was practiced during 2014-19.
The previous Jagan Mohan Reddy government adopted the reverse tendering process for major projects like the Polavaram irrigation project on the Godavari River.
The cabinet also decided to reverse the excise policy introduced by the Jagan government, under which the government itself ran the retail liquor business instead of private players.
“In the previous government, all national and international liquor brands were taken out of the market, and existing distilleries were forcibly taken over to produce local brands by vested interests, without any control over quality and price,” he said.
He added that the government itself was running the liquor business during the previous regime, leading to an increase in the sale of illicit liquor, which posed a public health hazard and resulted in a loss of about Rs 18,000 crore to the state exchequer.
The government has also decided to abolish the Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB), created by the Jagan government to control liquor and ganja smuggling. Apparently, Naidu felt that the SEB had failed to achieve its objectives.
The cabinet also decided to remove the pictures and names of Jagan from the pattadar passbooks and halt the registration of disputed lands.
