Police Housing Corporation is a public undertaking with the construction programme as its mandate. It has been taking in hand numerous construction works allotted to it by various departments. So far it has executed over 200 works up to medium size. In reply to a question by BJP MLA from Ramnagar Ranbir Singh Pathania in the Legislative Assembly, Chief Minister who is In-charge of Home Department made some revelations about the Police Housing Corporation. One very interesting revelation she said was that the Corporation does not conform to the mechanism of calling for tenders while allocating works to contractors. This, however, is violation of financial code and other relevant practices observed by the R&B Department. The Chief Minister disclosed that Jammu and Kashmir Police Housing Corporation has executed Rs 305 crore worth works without adopting tendering process during the past four years. She disclosed that in the year 2014-15, 130 works worth Rs 108.86 crore were executed by the Police Housing Corporation without floating tenders while as in 2015-16, 73 works worth Rs 83.77 crore got executed by completely ignoring the Financial Code. Similarly, 68 works worth Rs 71.53 crore and 14 works worth Rs 41.36 crore were executed in 2016-17 and 2017-18 respectively without floating tenders, which otherwise is considered as proper and transparent procedure. However, the Chief Minister defended the Corporation in the area of quality of the structures saying that it had the requisite technical expertise to execute the projects that it undertook.
With all said and done, it will be proper that the Police Housing Corporation observes the financial code and practices because tendering the contracts is the recognized procedure and may not be discarded. Not tendering the works is called piece work and the Board of Directors has authorized the Corporation to discard the practice of tendering and invite the contractors to take up the execution of the works. All this needs to be streamlined and brought in line with the recognized practice.
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