State minister for finance and also health, Chandrima Bhattacharya said a serious issue has come to light concerning the free and fair conduct of elections in West Bengal, pointing to procedural manipulation and biased intent in the tender process.
The senior minister said this at a press conference today. She pointed out that on 2 June, the CEO-WB floated a tender for webcasting services for the upcoming by-election in 80-Kaliganj AC (Nadia) scheduled for 19 June, and the counting process on 23 June. “What should have been a transparent and competitive bidding process has now emerged as a textbook case of contract rigging designed to favour a pre-selected vendor and deliberately eliminate capable, experienced Bengal-based agencies. First, the tender timeline was unusually tight, effectively disqualifying regional, experienced service providers from participating. The rushed schedule appears to be a deliberate ploy to limit competition, raising serious suspicion of collusion and predetermined selection,” she said.
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Pointing out other objections she said that a highly questionable eligibility criterion was inserted. “Bidders were required to have implemented at least one project in the last three years involving a minimum of 100 vehicle-mounted live video streaming units. This clause has never before featured in any CEO-WB tender (2016, 2019, 2021, 2024). No other CEO office across India has included such a condition.
She further said that the evaluation process was “manipulated”. “Only three agencies were deemed eligible: Vmukti, iNet Secure Labs, and Brihaspati. Of them, Brihaspati was disqualified for not executing live web streaming in 20,000 locations; iNet, despite quoting Rs 18.02 lakh and having strong credentials, was mysteriously awarded only 15 marks with no justification,” she said.
She pointed out that pre-qualification documents were ignored, clause-wise technical marking was never published, and financial bids were opened first, and only then were technical scores back-calculated to ensure the Gujarat-based vendor emerged as L1. “This is not an isolated case of bureaucratic oversight; it’s part of the BJP’s larger conspiracy to hijack the electoral process. First, they attempted voter fraud by duplicating EPIC numbers and bringing in ghost voters from BJP-ruled states. That attempt was exposed by Mamata Banerjee.”
She later said that the TMC demands that the ECI act not as a BJP rubber stamp, but as a constitutional guardian of democratic values. “We call upon the Commission to ensure that fairness, neutrality, and meritocracy are upheld in every aspect of electoral conduct. We see this as a malicious intent and mischievous effort on BJP-controlled EC’s part. If the Election Commission chooses to remain silent, it will be complicit in the erosion of democracy,” said the minister.