Manual tendering system to be out in Sikkim

State Govt mulling to extend e-tendering umbrella to all national projects


Sikkim Express:


GANGTOK, December 5: A three day interactive training programme on ‘e-tendering’ organized by PMGSY cell under State Rural Development department which had commenced from December 3 concluded today at Accounts & Administrative Training Institute (AATI), Gangtok under the guidance of ‘National Informatics Centre’ (NIC).

The first two day of the training programme was targeted to train the departmental officials and employees on the ‘e-tendering’ system and the concluding day was reserved solely for registered contractors and builders who will soon be bidding online for advertised works sitting in the comfort of their homes and offices. The ‘e-tendering’ application currently covers just PMGSY in Sikkim but the State government plans to gradually and steadily cover all national projects and schemes being implemented in the States under the e-umbrella.

It is informed that ‘e-tendering’ system is a dynamic real time web application secured by ‘Digitial Signature Certificate’ technology. The system is designed and developed by NIC Chennai and NIC Bhubaneswar, the robust and efficient application aims to prevent manipulation, usher transparency, reduce the processing and evaluation time, negate the chances of human error and thus help the departments publishing the notice of invitation as well as the bidders responding to the same by optimizing the existing identified processes into IT enabled services.

Realizing and the potential of the application endorsed by the improved performances in Orissa and West Bengal, National Rural Roads Development Agency, Ministry of Rural Development has decided to extend the system to a select 14 States taking the performance of individual States in the national ‘Bharat Nirman Programme’ as an index, it is informed.

The State rural development department informed that Sikkim being the second State after Rajasthan to achieve the Bharat Nirman target in India and felicitated as an efficient State by the Union government for its consistent performance over the last few years is one of the States where ‘e-tendering’ system has to be adopted in 2010 phasing out the existing manual system of inviting tenders.