RTI: MU tweaked conditions for on-screen marking tenders

Even as the government is yet to take action against MeritTrac — the service provider that was given the task of On-Screen Marking (OSM) at the University of Mumbai, a recent Right to Information (RTI) application reply has revealed that the varsity tweaked and undermined the tender conditions before awarding the contract to the company.

A response to an RTI query by activist Anil Galgali revealed that the university passed the purchase order for awarding the contract to the company on April 27, 2017, a day before the varsity's Management Council gave a final nod to appoint the agency on April 28. On August 13, DNA had earlier written about how the university, under its then Vice-Chancellor Dr Sanjay Deshmukh did not sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) before beginning the OSM work.

The lapses that were caused by the whole assessment process led to an unprecedented delay in declaring the results of over 4 lakh students.

The RTI response also revealed that the university relaxed the minimum standards for the company which could apply.

This was done as it failed to get three bidders in the first round. In the original tender documents, the minimum requirements for qualification in the tender process were pegged at Rs 100 crores was reduced to Rs 30 crores and the requirements of Minimum Technical Score for consideration in qualifying for the tender was scoring 70 points, which was modified to 60 points.

"The university brought down the minimum conditions to award the contract to a company which suits its own interests. By doing this, it has played with the future of lakhs of students who suffered due to the result mess" said Galgali.

Documents shared by the university also reveal that of the two qualified bidders - Tata Consultancy services (TCS) had scored 95 points, whereas Merit Trac had scored 45 points despite which the varsity went ahead to award the contract to the latter. The third company Shree Computers was disqualified on technical grounds. "MeriTrac was charging rupees 23.90 per answerbook whereas TCS was charging rupees 49.90. The university just wanted to get a cheap job done at the cost of students," said Galgali.

Nagendran Sundarajan, executive vice-president, MeritTrac said that the company has got the contract after proving its merit. "We have done our presentations in front of the technical committee. Ours is a company that has got over 100 crore turnover for the last three years and we have not made any request to relax the conditions. We don't want to talk about what the competitors did," added Sundarajan.

Despite repeated calls and messages, Vijay Joshi who headed the tender committee at the university could not be reached for comment.

Varsity to take action against teachers who did not assess papers

The university will soon take action against the 3,700 odd teachers who did not log into the assessment portal during the summer assessment even once. At a meeting of the Board of Examinations, the varsity decided to issue showcause notices to such teachers after which disciplinary action is likely to be initiated against them.

Changes made

In the original tender documents, the minimum requirements for qualification in the tender process were pegged at Rs 100 crore, but was reduced to Rs 30 crore.