Transparency, Competition, Fairness and Elimination of Arbitrariness in Public Buying

Public buying should be conducted in a transparent manner to bring competition, fairness and elimination of arbitrariness in the system. This will enable the prospective tenderers to formulate competitive tenders with confidence. The following are some important measures to achieve the same and, thus, secure best value for money:
(a) The text of the tender document should be user-friendly, selfcontained, comprehensive, unambiguous, and relevant to the objective of the purchase. The use of terminology used in common parlance in the industry should be preferred.
(b) The specifications of the required goods should be framed giving sufficient details in such a manner that it is neither too elaborately restrictive as to deter potential tenderers or increase the cost of purchase nor too sketchy to leave scope for sub-standard supply.
The specifications must meet the essential requirements of the user department. Efforts should also be made to use standard specifications, which are widely known to the industry.
(c) The tender document should clearly mention the eligibility criteria to be met by the tenderers such as minimum level of experience, past performance, technical capability, manufacturing facilities, financial position, ownership or any legal restriction etc.
(d) Restrictions on who is qualified to tender should conform to extant Government policies and be judiciously chosen so as not to stifle competition amongst potential tenderers.
(e) The procedure for preparing and submitting the tenders; deadline for submission of tenders; date, time & place of public opening of tenders; requirement of earnest money and performance security; parameters for determining responsiveness of tenders; evaluating and ranking of tenders and criteria for full or partial acceptance of tender and conclusion of contract should be incorporated in the tender enquiry in clear terms.
(f) Tenders should be evaluated in terms of the criteria already incorporated in the tender document, based on which tenders have been received. Any new condition, which was not incorporated in the tender document, should not be brought into consideration while evaluating the tenders.
(g) Sufficient time should be allowed to the tenderers to prepare and submit their tenders.
(h) Suitable provisions should be kept in the tender document allowing the tenderers reasonable opportunity to question the tender conditions, tendering process, and/or rejection of its tender and the settlement of disputes, if any, emanating from the resultant contract.
(i) It should be made clear in the tender document that tenderers are not permitted to alter or modify their tenders after expiry of the deadline for receipt of tender till the date of validity of tenders and if they do so, their earnest money will be forfeited.
(j) Negotiations with the tenderers must be severely discouraged. However, in exceptional circumstances, where price negotiations are considered unavoidable, the same may be resorted to, but only with the lowest evaluated responsive tenderer, and that too with the approval of the competent authority, after duly recording the reasons for such action.
(k) The name of the successful tenderer to whom the supply contract is awarded should be appropriately notified by the purchase organization for the information of general public, including display at notice board, periodical bulletins, website etc.

Source: MANUAL ON POLICIES AND PROCEDURES FOR PURCHASE OF GOODS

Option Date Under 6th CPC w.r.t Date of Promotion/ Increment after 1/1/2006

(1) For option from Date of Increment :- The studies shows that employees defer 6CPC pay fixation to their respective increment month get no benefit out of the same.
This is because when an employee misses the revised increment during July 2006 on account of deferred fixation, he loses 3% of revised pay which is at any point of time more than the pre-revised increment the employee gets when he continues to get old pay after 1.1.2006. This is why the new Pay Fixation after 01.01.06 based on fitment table is lesser than the New Pay fixed on 1.1.2006.

(2) For option from Date of Promotion :- The studies shows that those who have been promoted or received their ACP after June-2006 can get benefits out of deferred pay fixation in the form of enhanced new pay as on Sept 2008. But you may have to incur loss in the pay arrears as you end up in receiving only the old pay till the date of New pay fixation.

The beneficial aspect of differing option to date of promotion is apparent particularly in case of Assistant Gr(I) of CSIR , for whom Pay scale has been revised w.e.f 15/09/2006, and their Basic is fixed below 6500 after fixation in revised scale of 6500-200-10500. The lower the fixation more the benefit.