Thursday, February 9 2006 18:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: A senior CPI(M) MP has accused the empowered Group of Ministers on Delhi, Mumbai airport modernisation of apparently committing an act of commission, alleging it had transgressed its power by 'evolving its own bidding criteria' by reducing the technical prequalification benchmark from 80 to 50 per cent to allow more bidders.

Observing that the Committee of Secretaries (CoS) had recommended that only one bidder each be technically qualified for the two airports, Rajya Sabha MP Dipankar Mukherjee said the eGoM could either had approved this recommendation or scrapped the evaluation process and sought fresh bids.

In a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, he said, "Instead, the eGoM decided to evolve its own bidding criteria and in the process, reduced the benchmark for technical prequalification from 80 to 50 per cent. The eGoM accordingly decided that four bidders for each airport could be allowed to go for the opening of financial bids."

"From the above it is apparent that eGoM had actually put its own input to the recommendation of the CoS or Inter Ministerial Goup (IMG), which in my humble opinion is grossly improper if not unethical," Mukherjee said.

Mukherjee said the Executive, in this case, has "Clearly transgressed its power by going beyond the terms of reference, and therefore owes an answer to Parliament for its apparent act of commission".

He urged the Prime Minister to reconsider the Cabinet decision on the selection of bidders by the eGoM as it was "beyond its terms of reference" and taken in 'undue haste'.

"I am sure you will agree that an act of omission/commission, if any, of the Executive has to be judged in Parliament as this involves not only the test of law by judiciary but accountability of the Executive to Parliament", Mukherjee said.