BJP seeks inquiry into BMC’s tender process for revamping zoo

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Wednesday sought an inquiry into the tender process followed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) in awarding the contract for revamping the city’s Byculla zoo.

The demand has come amid allegations that some civic officials were involved in rigging the tenders for the zoo revamp work to favour certain contractors.

BJP group leader in BMC, Manoj Kotak, has written a letter to the municipal commissioner Ajoy Mehta demanding inquiry into awarding of the contract and initiating action against the officials concerned.

“I have requested the civic chief to launch a departmental enquiry to find out how bogus contractors, who had no experience in building a zoo had emerged as frontrunners for the revamp project,” Kotak said.

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In the letter written on Tuesday, Kotak said, “It appears that the municipal commissioner has stopped the tenders for the revamping the animal enclosures in Veer Mata Jijabai Bhosle Udyan.”

“Despite repeatedly bringing to the notice of the BMC that the tenders were being rigged, the civic officials drafted tenders to favour only a certain set of contractors.  They violated tender-drafting norms and some contractors were disqualified without proper justification. So there should be a high-level inquiry into the tendering process,” it said.

The revamp project is aimed at creating better and spacious enclosures for tigers, lions, deer and other animals in the zoo, which is located at Byculla in south Mumbai.

Last month, Kotak had suggested the civic body to seek assistance from Mumbai’s ‘sister cities’, such as Yokohama (Japan) and Stuttgart (Germany) to borrow some concepts in revamping the zoo.

Highlighting the importance of the sister cities concept, he said, “The sister city concept is to provide a non-profit citizen diplomacy network that creates and strengthens partnerships between communities at the global level. The organisation strives to build global cooperation as the municipal level, promote cultural understanding and stimulate the economic developments.”

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