The Hindu : New Delhi News : Cabinet nod for appointment of consultants

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, May 03, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

Cabinet nod for appointment of consultants

Staff Reporter

Attempt to speed up Capital beautification works The Delhi Government has also selected eight different stretches of roads under the project

NEW DELHI: : To do away with inordinate delays pertaining to floating of tenders for consultants every time a project is to be taken up, the Delhi Cabinet today cleared the proposal for appointment of consultants for streetscaping and beautification of certain stretches of road in the Capital.

The Cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, decided that the streetscaping work would include overall improvement in aesthetics by taking care of various aspects such as street-lighting, street furniture, bus shelters and footpaths.

To begin with, the Delhi Government has also selected eight different stretches of roads for the purpose. These include a 2-km stretch of Ring Road in the ISBT area, a 5-km area at Dhaula Kuan, a 2-km stretch from ITO Crossing to Delhi Gate, a 2-km road at Gole Market, 1 km on Baba Kharak Singh Marg, 1 km on Janpath, and 2 km each at Red Fort and Delhi University area.

The Urban Development Minister of Delhi, A.K. Walia, said the idea behind the whole exercise was to do away with delays associated with the implementation of such projects. "Every time a civic body needs to work on a given area, it has to float tenders for inviting the consultants and this used to take up a lot of time.''

Eight projects

So a couple of months ago, Dr. Walia said, the Delhi Government floated a tender for appointment of consultants and thereafter 19 consultants - basically, big architectural firms - were short-listed for future contracts.

Henceforth, in these eight projects and all other that would follow, six of these short-listed consultants would be called forth to make their presentations. Then three of the presentations will be short-listed and then the agency concerned will decide on the one through which it would like to proceed with the project on the basis of the costs quoted by them. The one bidding the lowest will be given the work.

Dr. Walia said while as of now the consultants had not been short-listed for any given time frame, their continuation would depend on their performance.

"For us basically it is a short cut to prevent wastage of time in deciding on the line of action to the pursued,'' he said, adding that the consultants would also only suggest the methodology to be followed for a project and would not execute it.

"It would be up to the respective departments to see the presentations, finalise the best three, get the lowest quote and see if they want to execute the project on their own or whether they want to outsource the work.''

Either way, the Minister said, this was an effort to clear unnecessary hurdles in timely completion of works and the success of the scheme alone would determine if a similar model would be adopted for various projects leading up to the Commonwealth Games 2010.

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