Cheating with Gujrat Rail Tech Industry by Hyderabad based firm HBL?

Western Railway authorities are not taking interest to help effected GRTI

Mumbai: A Hyderabad based firm M/s. HBL (Hyderabad Battery Limited), is manufacturing the integrated power supply from last 20 years. This is a special item named IPS (integrated power supply) is used for Signalling installation to get the various suppliers of DC/AC from 110 V DC.

There are other approved firms also who are supplying the IPS system i.e. Statcon/Delhi and Amar Raja Tirupati.

Indian Railways has given Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) to these firms due to lack of expertise of Railway engineers.

Initially, HBL was the bulk supplier of IPS system i.e. between 1995 t0 2003, but due to the poor performance of their equipment, the railways have switched over to Statcon and Amar Raja.

M/s. HBL was carrying out the AMC in Bhavnagar division of Western Railway from last 7 to 8 years. During the year 2014, there were a lot of complaints from SrDSTE in regard to poor maintenance.

There was only one engineer provided by HBL, who was maintaining the 37 stations. The engineer was liquor addict and not moving to the sites.

It came to know of the difficulties and suggested to handover the work to Gujrat Rail Tech Industry (GRTI), as they are already in the business of power supply.

General Manager, Operation of HBL agreed and awarded the contract for balance two years work from March 2014. Railway awarded this contract for two years only. As per the third party agreement between HBL and GRTI, later was to get 80% payment of contract value.

Sources told to the ‘railway Samachar’ that GRTI helped to get their payment which was pending for one year and arranged funds and got the penalty reduced from railway due to their efforts and negotiation with the railway, first-year payment with 4 months of GRTI was paid to HBL in June 2014 but GRTI were paid after six months.

During April 2015, M/s HBL withdrawn the contract without the issue of any notice. They also lured GRTI staff with high salary.

This contract was taken back after 13 months due to change of guards GRTI arranged the 9 months papers and submitted to Western Railway authorities. HBL representative signed the bill and received the payment in June 2017 without informing to GRTI.

GRTI communicated umpteen number of times to M/s. HBL but they are telling that they are calculating the payment.

The payment due is about 12 lakh (80% of 14 lakh received by M/s. HBL) but SrDSTE/BVP is not taking interest to the disbursement of balance payment to GRTI even as per rules.