When it comes to looting of public money, there appears to be no difference between the Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments.
Both the Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrasekhar Rao governments are adopting innovative methods to plunder the public money and benefitting their favourite contractors.
At a time when Chandrababu Naidu in AP is facing a lot of criticism in adopting Swiss Challenge method in favouring Singapore consortium in construction of Amaravati, the state capital, his Telangana counterpart is also following his footsteps in adopting this method in awarding irrigation projects to contractors.
As per this Swiss Challenge method, the government will first select its favourite contractor at its own will and enter into an agreement with it. However, it will put up the bid of this particular contractor for challenge by any other contractor. If anybody comes forward to do the project at a lesser cost for the same terms and conditions, the government would put up bid before the already selected contractor and bargain for the same. Ultimately, it will be given to the original contractor.
Naidu is doing it to favour Singapore contractor; and KCR is also said to have asked the officials to follow this method for irrigation projects like Palamuru-Ranga Reddy project.
“This is too much. The government should call for global tenders and select the lowest bidder. In the name of expediting projects, the government has chosen this method to give the works worth crores of rupees on nomination to its favourite contractors,” a Congress leader alleged.
