MARGAO
In keeping with the Supreme Court order, the auto industry transitioned to the BS6 regime in April 2000.
A year down the line now, the Margao Municipal Council is in correspondence mode with various government agencies, including the Transport department on how to bring on road the three Tata BS4 engine trucks, presently at the agency showroom.
Whether or not the civic body will manage to get the three vehicles on the road remains a million dollar question and has thrown up a question for the civic babus – who is to be blamed for the delay in taking possession of the three vehicles after making the payments to the tune of over Rs 35 lakh to the auto agency?
A host of questions remains unanswered. Did the auto agency fail to alert the civic body on time to take possession of the vehicles and register the same with the transport department? Or, was there lethargy on the part of civic officials to rush to take possession of the vehicles when the buzz around the entire country was that BS4 vehicles will no longer be sold and registered after March 2020?
Is there any way out in the form of an exemption to the Supreme Court ruling given that the three vehicles were being purchased by a public utility agency such as the Civic body? And, will the government bail out the civic body by getting the transport department register the three vehicles and save the tax payer’s money from going waste?
Officials handling the matter attribute the delay to the e-tendering process to finalize the dealer involved in bodybuilding as well as the auto agency for not alerting the Civic body on time.
A look at the chronology of events in the file noting shows that the process to purchase the three trucks was initiated in late 2018 by the last council. Accordingly, the civic body invited quotations for the purchase in January 2019, with the Municipality making an advance payment of Rs 35.50 lakh to the agency in April 2019.
In May, 2019, the auto dealer wrote a letter to the Municipality to take possession of the three chassis. The MMC did not take possession of the vehicles as it was decided to take possession only when the Civic body ropes in a body building agency. This was communicated to the auto agency two months later on August 1, 2019.
Officials pointed out the Civic body have invited tenders from prospective body builders, but the whole process was abandoned after the accounts section insisted on e-tendering of the work. Records state there was no taker from any of the contractors. To overcome the situation, the Director of Municipal Administrator requested the MMC to again for e-tendering for the second time and to exercise the option of going for open tender if there were again no takers for the e-tender.
A host of correspondence could be seen between the Civic body and the DMA’s office, losing some precious time to take the process to the logical conclusion. The e-tendering could not take place till December, 2019 as the government had appointed another e-tendering agency and the e-tender was finally issued.
The e-tender was finally finalized in February 2020, but it could not be opened till March 3, 2020 in view of the intervening Zilla Panchayat elections. And, before the Council could complete the body building process, the date for transition to BS6 regime had come into force on April 1, 2020.
A Civic official pointed out that though the auto agency had written to the Municipality on March 26, 2020 to get the vehicles registered before March 31, 2020, the letter was surprisingly entered in the Council on May 18, throwing up a question who was responsible for causing the delay.
When the Civic body finally applied to the transport department to register the three vehicles on May 18, the RTO refused to register on grounds that the computer system is not accepting the BS4 model for registration.
