Too late? CCA dumps TCS, CMC bids

Ashu Kumar in New Delhi

The Controller of Certifying Authorities (CCA) for digital signatures has finally rejected the bids of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), CMC Ltd and ER&DCI (Electronics Research and Development Center of India) for commissioning of software systems for root authority.
According to highly placed sources at CCA office, “The bids have already been rejected and a written intimations are being issued to the three companies today (Wednesday) about the decision.”

All the three companies have been disqualified because they had submitted their bids after the deadline of 3 pm on 8th October, the CCA official said adding that the objections were also raised by other participants in the tender demanding the rejection.

TCS and CMC, when informed about the delay after a day of submitting the bids, had written to CCA claiming that they had submitted the bids in time. “Time stamps put by our office are the proof of the delay and the companies will have to prove the time stamps wrong if they want to be included in the tender process,” CCA sources said.

However, TCS and CMC are crying foul saying time stamping was not done in front of their representatives. “If our bid was late, why did they accept,” said a TCS official requesting annonymity.

According to time stamps, CMC’s bid was later by 2 minutes and TCS bid came after 8 minutes of the deadline. “The time difference can be ignored as we wasted time locating the room in the IT ministry building as it was not mentioned in the tender document,” said a senior CMC executive.

The two companies are now planning to make another representation to the CCA requesting to consider their bids. “There are court rulings in the past that the delay of a few minutes is not a gross violation of rules,” said the TCS official. The companies might also go to the court challenging their exclusion..

The project has strategic significance because the company that executes the project, will get mileage in the digital signature technology market in India as its technology will be considered proven and accepted by the root authority.