Bidders differ, but same IP address, phone numbers: DVAC

It reveals that at the bidding stage itself, accused persons and companies colluded among themselves for getting the tenders. All these works come under SP Velumani, who was the municipal administration minister at that time. This implies that all the persons operated from same computer, establishing their collusion against the existing rules, said DVAC.

For example, SP Anbarasan’s firm Senthil and Co and one Rajan Rathinasamy are registered contractors of the Coimbatore Municipal Corporation. Both parties had bid for 47 tenders among themselves during the years 2014 and 2017. It is revealed that, both the contractors were registered under the same mobile number and also the bids were submitted from the same IP Address one after the other indicating that both the parties were one and the same and colluded for the purpose of bidding.

Also, it is an established law that, competitive bids in a tender submitted by a company and another bid submitted by one of its own directors, are prohibited, whereas 5 tenders of Coimbatore Corporation during 2014-2015, the KCP Engineers Pvt Ltd and its director K Chandraprakash, bid amongst themselves and one of them won the contract.

The DVAC further noted that there is a clear pattern of collusive bidding in 14 tenders of Coimbatore Corporation during 2014-2015 worth Rs 5.86 crores, in which only two parties, ie, KCP Engineers Pvt Ltd and J Robert Raja, bid for tenders and KCP Engineers won all the 14 contracts. It is to be noted that Chandraprakash is the director of KCP Engineers (P) Ltd and Robert Raja was also a shareholder in KCP Engineers (P) Ltd. Glaringly, the EMD for Robert Raja for all the 14 tenders were paid from the account of Sundari, mother of Chandraprakash, the director of KCP Engineers Pvt Ltd.

Similarly, collusive bidding is seen in case of the firm SP Builders, a proprietorship concern owned by R Murugesan. The data analysis of 131 tender files of the Coimbatore Corporation for the period between January 2015 and October 2015, reveals that SP Builders has been used as a shell bidder/the only co-bidder in all the 131 tenders. It lost 130 tenders to one of the firms namely, KCP Engineers (P) Ltd, Vardhan Infrastructure, Constronics India, P Senthil Co or J Robert Raja.