One Firm Lands Repair Contracts Across Five AMC Zones with Identical Bids, Sparks Row
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Summarized by AI; it may make mistakes. Check important info
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation is under scrutiny following a controversial tender process that saw a single contractor submit identical bids for road and bridge repair works across five distinct civic zones.
Civic authorities floated separate tenders to fix potholes, cracks, and surface damage on concrete corridors, white-topping stretches, and flyovers across the city. Natural Semeco Private Limited emerged as the eligible bidder for all five zones by quoting an exact figure of Rs 98.30 lakh per zone—representing an identical 1.71 per cent discount on the municipal administration’s baseline estimates in every instance.
A proposal to award all five zonal repair contracts to the same firm has now reached the AMC Road and Building Committee, raising concerns over bidding transparency and oversight within the urban body.
Questions Raised Over Uniform Pricing Model
The development has drawn sharp criticism due to significant operational variations between the city’s administrative zones. Ahmedabad currently features over 65 white-topping stretches, alongside extensive concrete arterial roads in areas like Ghatlodia and Sindhu Bhavan Road.
However, the concentration of these specialised road surfaces is far from uniform across the municipality:
- West Zone Dominance: Holds the highest concentration of white-topping projects and heavy-traffic concrete corridors requiring frequent maintenance.
- Disparate Zonal Workloads: Several other zones contain a fraction of the West Zone's concrete road volume, meaning actual maintenance requirements vary substantially by area.
Despite these clear geographical and operational differences, Natural Semeco Private Limited submitted identical financial quotes and matching discount percentages across every individual tender.
Proposal Moves to Road and Building Committee
The proposal to sanction the contracts and hand control of the five zones to the contractor is currently awaiting approval from the AMC Road and Building Committee.
With the proposal moving toward final approval, committee members and municipal officials face mounting pressure to explain how identical bidding metrics were achieved across geographically distinct zones with vastly different infrastructure demands.
