Ahmedabad: The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) has imposed a Rs 5 lakh penalty on its appointed consultant, Multimedia Consultant Pvt Ltd, for wrongly qualifying a company in the Rs 49 crore tender to set up a 100 million litres per day (MLD) water treatment plant. The issue came up during a water and sewerage committee meeting on Monday.The consultant was entrusted with preparing and processing the tender for the construction of an additional 100 MLD capacity water treatment plant at the Raska Water Treatment Plant premises. During the technical evaluation, five companies were declared qualified. However, it later emerged that one of the firms had been cleared despite lacking the mandatory experience in constructing water treatment plants.When the financial bids were opened, the wrongly qualified company — Skyway Infra Projects Pvt Ltd — emerged as the lowest bidder, triggering scrutiny. Subsequent checks revealed that the consultant had erroneously considered the company’s experience in sewage treatment plants (STP) instead of water treatment plants (WTP), in violation of the tender conditions.Following the controversy, Multimedia Consultant Pvt Ltd issued a letter to the civic body admitting to the mistake. Based on this admission, AMC decided to impose a Rs 5 lakh fine on the consultant for the lapse.An AMC official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the error appeared to be unintentional but serious, as it affected the integrity of the tender process. “The consultant acknowledged that STP experience was mistakenly treated as WTP experience,” the official said.Water and Sewerage Committee chairman Dilip Bagariya confirmed the penalty and said the civic body would soon decide whether to scrap the tender and invite fresh bids to ensure transparency and compliance with norms.
