LAHORE: The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) on Saturday said that Bin Zayed Group and Al-Haj Group of Companies, which has filed a petition over the non-acceptance of their bid for the sixth Pakistan Super League team, had failed to submit their bid before the official cut-off date and time for the submission of bids for the sixth franchise and was therefore rejected as per applicable bidding rules and international best practices.
Clarifying a report published in this newspaper on Thursday, June 8 titled ‘UAE group files petition against induction of sixth PSL team’, the PCB stated: “The official time and date for the bid was 12.00pm on 30th May 2017 and this deadline was published in the tender advertisement in various local and international publications on 28th April 2017 and was also outlined in the bid documents.”
“All bidders submitted their bids before the cut-off time except the Petitioner whose representatives were 20 minutes late and attempted to forcibly submit their bid in a clear violation of the provisions of the bid documents. The bidders present on the occasion and the external auditors monitoring the process did not agree to the late acceptance of the bid documents of the Petitioner and rejected the bid,” said the PCB.
The Petitioner immediately approached the Honourable Lahore High Court (LHC) which issued notices to PCB and in the meantime, provisionally allowed the Petitioner to submit their bid adding that the fate of their bid would be subject to the final outcome of the writ petition. “In compliance of the order of the Honourable LHC the bid of the Petitioner was therefore received by the PCB. But Upon evaluation the Petitioner’s Technical Proposal was found to be non-compliant and the bid committee had no option but to disqualify the same and return their Financial Proposal unopened,” the PCB added.
According to PCB, the bidding process was carried in an extremely professional and unbiased manner and was overseen by an internationally renowned independent audit firm.
Published in Dawn, June 11th, 2017
https://www.dawn.com/news/1338749
