The Tamil Nadu government’s decision to cancel a tender for 1,000 electric buses for the Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation, followed by an announcement that the procurement process would continue, has triggered questions over how major public transport decisions are being cleared and communicated.
The tender was issued in March for the purchase of 1,000 electric buses. After the Assembly election and a change in government, the deadline for submitting bids was postponed several times, according to a report by Dinamalar. On October 14, the state government announced that the tender notification would be cancelled.
The Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation subsequently said that the cancellation notice had been issued by mistake and that the tender process would continue. The reversal has placed the procurement of the electric buses under renewed public scrutiny because the two announcements pointed to different positions on a major city transport purchase.
PMK leader Anbumani Ramadoss questioned how a government-issued tender could be cancelled without the government’s knowledge. He argued that an administrative decision normally passes through several levels, from section officers to directors and secretaries, before being issued.
“Anyone may make a mistake, but how can all the officials make a mistake?” Anbumani said, according to the report. He attributed the confusion not to officials alone but to those responsible for taking policy decisions, and asked why the government was facing difficulty in making administrative decisions.
The immediate dispute is therefore not only about the status of one procurement notice. It also concerns the chain of responsibility behind public transport contracting. A tender for 1,000 buses involves the transport corporation, the state government and multiple levels of administrative approval. The conflicting notices have made it unclear, based on the information available in the report, which decision was formally authorised and what process was followed before each announcement.
The proposed procurement is significant for Chennai’s bus network because it concerns the introduction of a large number of electric buses through the city’s public transport system. However, the report does not provide details on the tender’s estimated value, the proposed delivery schedule, charging infrastructure, route allocation or the number of existing electric buses operated by the corporation. It also does not state whether bids had already been submitted before the deadline was repeatedly extended.
Anbumani said the government should take decisions after adequate examination and remain firm once a decision is made. He criticised what he described as a pattern of taking decisions in haste and changing them immediately, saying that such reversals would not strengthen administration.
The next formal step is the continuation of the tender process as stated by the Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation. The report does not specify a revised bid deadline or provide further details on how the cancellation notice was issued and withdrawn.
