‘Guilty of dereliction of duty, misuse of position’, HC nod to disciplinary action against two VMC ex-commissioners

The court of Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal and Justice Pranav Trivedi said that its “tentative opinion” is that Patel and Rao “are guilty of dereliction of duty and misuse of their position”. “In any eventuality, Kotia Projects cannot be said to be a qualified bidder in the process and, as such, there was no question of its selection,” the HC said.

It directed the state government that the “disciplinary action, so initiated, shall be brought to its logical conclusion by adopting due procedure of law, and the result of the same shall be brought before the court”.

The order noted that the court “desists” from “making any further observation in the manner in which the fact-finding committee has prepared its report”, following the submission by the advocate general that the state government “will initiate disciplinary action against the two officers… through its general administration department as per All India Services (Discipline And Appeal) Rules, 1969, and All India Services (Death-cum-Retirement Benefits) Rules, 1958”.

The HC, however, took “strong exception” to observations in the report of the fact-finding committee headed by the Principal Secretary (Urban Development) Ashwani Kumar. It observed that “it seemed that the fact-finding committee is trying to cover up the illegality committed in the matter of grant of contract to Kotia Projects”.

The committee had recorded in its inquiry report that the entire process, with respect to granting the contract to Kotia Projects in its second attempt, after it failed to qualify in its first attempt, and the commissioner endorsing what is put before him by the technical team, “is what is generally followed at Vadodara Municipal Corporation… also similar to what is followed in other urban local bodies and, therefore, no fault can be found in the process”.

The HC did not mince words to record its dissatisfaction with the committee’s effort “to mellow down the affairs of the corporation”.

“If this is the procedure and process which is being followed in the corporation and urban local bodies, in the state, then the (Gujarat) principal secretary, urban development and urban housing department, is required to change his own approach to have a re-look (at) his own opinion about the manner of working of such public bodies,” it said.

“We may note that the fact-finding committee is sounding modest in saying that the ‘entire tendering exercise could have been reviewed/scrapped’. In our opinion, the entire tendering process should have been reviewed/scrapped, which is reflection of a sheer illegality in the tendering process,” it added.

The court said that the proposal submitted to the VMC standing committee by then commissioner Dr Vinod R Rao, for Kotia Projects to qualify as the successful bidder, “suffers from grave illegality”. How the proposal was approved by the standing committee and the general body “is a question which raises eyebrows”, it added.

“At least, we can observe that the principal secretary… is required to take a serious view of the manner of working of the standing committee and the general body… which is now in charge of the affairs of the corporation. No such instance should be repeated,” the order noted.

While the second expression of interest (EOI), inviting bids for management and redevelopment of the lake was issued by VMC in December 2015, when H S Patel was the commissioner, Rao was the commissioner when Kotia Projects’ bid was evaluated and subsequently forwarded to the standing committee and general body for approval. Kotia Projects had failed to qualify when the first EOI was issued by VMC under Patel.

Based on the fact-finding committee’s report, the court observed, “It is, thus, clear that as per the finding of the committee that the requisite procedure for advertisement of the tender in question was not followed by the corporation and the municipal commissioner who authorised himself to take steps for development of various lakes and surrounding areas on PPP mode, is guilty of not following the prescribed procedure in the matter of grant of contract on PPP mode.”