The Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government is facing questions over the tender process for the construction of the Chief Minister’s Office, with a Times of India (TOI) report saying that mandatory online tendering norms were not followed and that the demolition work began even before the tenders were floated in public.
The allegations are particularly notable because transparency in government procurement has been one of the reforms publicly highlighted by the new government and by Chief Minister Vijay personally.
In its first budget, the TVK government announced reforms to public procurement through an open tender system, with Finance Minister N Marie Wilson saying the move was intended to end cartelisation, improve transparency and ensure that government contracts did not benefit a select group of contractors. The government has also said that departmental procurements and public tenders would be made fully transparent and subject to stricter monitoring.
Against that backdrop, the TOI report has raised questions over the tendering process for the Chief Minister’s new office.
According to the report, the Public Works Department’s (PWD) Buildings (Construction and Maintenance) wing issued tender notifications on August 12 and 13, inviting contractors to submit applications by September 1. However, the tenders were not initially uploaded on the government’s e-procurement portal, despite online tendering being mandatory.
According to the report, the tenders were uploaded online only after TOI raised the issue with PWD officials. The newspaper reported that it contacted PWD Secretary R Selvaraj at around 9.30 am on Monday, August 17, asking why the tenders had not been uploaded. Selvaraj reportedly said they would be put online, following which they appeared on the portal at around 10 am.
The delay is notable because, according to TOI, the PWD had uploaded 135 other tenders online between August 12 and August 17, while the three tenders relating to the CMO were not uploaded until the newspaper raised the issue.
The report also flagged discrepancies in the disclosure of the project cost. While the print version of the tender notice reportedly mentioned a value of Rs 5.54 crore, these cost details were absent from the online tender documents. The relevant cost field on the online portal was marked “NA”.
The controversy comes as the TVK government completes 100 days in office.