Weeks after being pulled by the High Court of Karnataka, the State Government has cancelled the tender awarded to Simplex Infrastructure Ltd. for the construction of a flyover between Ejipura Main Road and Kendriya Sadan in Koramangala. The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has now started the process to float a fresh tender for the completion of the work.
The Urban Development Department, in an order earlier this month, also stated that the infrastructure company would forfeit the security deposit of Rs 10.16 crore. It has been nearly five years since the tender for the Rs.204-crore project was awarded to Simplex, but only 42.83% progress had been achieved.
Senior civic officials said the BBMP would, as per directions of the High Court, file an FIR against the company. With the tender now cancelled, BBMP engineers will undertake a joint measurement and assessment exercise with the project consultant and Simplex. This will include an assessment of the work already executed and that which is still pending. The whole process is likely to take another month. The UDD, in the order, has directed the BBMP to float a fresh tender for the remainder of the work within the project cost of Rs. 204 crore as per norms of the Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement Act.
The construction of the 2.5-km-long flyover was taken up in May 2017 and the 30-month deadline ended in November 2019.
Following the inordinate delay and slow progress on the ground, BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta had written to the UDD to cancel the tender, citing various reasons for the same. For instance, the civic body had found that funds released for the project were being diverted by the company for other projects. Following this, the BBMP opened an Escrow account to prevent the diversion of funds. However, there was no progress in the work. According to senior officials, up to September 2021, it had cleared bills amounting to Rs.75 crore.
The BBMP had issued several warnings and even served two notices to the contractor for failure to adhere to the revised deadlines. For more than a year, work on the flyover had come to a standstill. This had prompted the local MLA and former Minister Ramalinga Reddy to stage a protest along with the local residents, who were greatly inconvenienced.
