Tripura Government to approach High Court

From a correspondent

Agartala, Aug 25:   The Tripura government will approach the High Court seeking revision of its earlier verdict, restricting the State government from implementing projects without following the General Fincial Rules, which made calling tenders mandatory for any construction work that cost above a certain amount.

Disposing of public interest litigation (PIL), Justice Subhasish Talapatra recently ordered that all government departments should follow the GFR as executing works without calling tenders is illegal.

The Rural Development Department was implementing projects departmentally without following the GFR over the years, while it was being followed in all other departments.

They used to assign one employee from within the department as implementing officer for each work and the fund was allotted to him to execute the work.  An official spokesman said the Central Government has recently amended its GFR and sent it to State governments with an option that the States may amend its GFR suitably.

Following the central GFR, the State has recently amended the State GFR, but it has exempted Rural Development and some other departments from following the GFR norms.  

resh Jamatia, Minister for Rural Development admitted that the State has amended the GFR and expressed hope that it will satisfy the legal requirements if the High Court agrees to revise its earlier verdict.

The state government’s argued that executing projects calling tender is a time consuming process and also incurs at least 10 per cent more expenses.

However, the petitioner in the PIL said that the RD department has become a den of corruption for not following the GFR, and in many cases beneficiaries remain in the dark about the projects that the department is implementing.  He further said major construction works are being entrusted to people having no technical knowledge and in many cases the Group-D employees are declared ‘implementing officer’ to execute projects.