Shillong, Sept 19: Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Tuesday said the cabinet decision to approve a Rs 700 crore tender for implementation of the loss reduction project under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS) reflects the transparency that the state power department has.
“Bringing it (tender) to the cabinet is an indication of the transparency that the department has, the minister has where he would like to share the procedure, the process followed, the steps taken in order to arrive to what we have arrived and to allot to work and to move ahead with certain aspects,” Conrad.
“You have to understand that it is a Rs 700 crores tender and when a large tendering process like this happens, it is a basic process that we follow that any large decision,” he said while adding, “So it is always a culture that we try to bring these kind of decisions to the cabinet for the sake of transparency. We are not trying to hide anything, it has given all details to the cabinet ministers and everything is in the open for people to see.”
Recently, the opposition AITC leader and former chief minister Mukul Sangma has questioned the cabinet decision to approve a tendering process proposed by the power department and cautioned the cabinet ministers if it can be a trap against them.
Reacting to this, Conrad said, “It’s quite funny that Mukul Sangma has questioned why. That means he is questioning the transparency procedure that we are having. If we wanted to do it quietly or if there was an intention then we would have never brought it to Cabinet.”
He said every detail about how many times the retendering, how many times the extension of the tendering was done it’s mentioned in the cabinet note. The cabinet ministers were briefed about it about the fact that the government had written continuously to the REC and informed them about the different kind of issues that came up in the tendering process and sought their approval to go ahead because the tendering process had been extended.






