royalpatiala.in NEWS Impact: GMADA cancels/ withdraws e-Auctions ; authority to refund fees/ emd paid by bidders
Kanwar Inder Singh/ royalpatiala.in News/ October 29,2023
On October 24,2023, News Portal royalpatiala.in had highlighted in these columns about the discrepancies in the e-Auction of GMADA, PUDA and other similar authorities and how the chief secretary Punjab Arurag Verma had issued strict instruction to GMADA , PUDA officials to comply with the transparent policies of chief minister of Punjab.
Now, the Greater Mohali area Development Authority (GMADA) authorities has cancelled/ withdrawn the ongoing e-Auctions from Oct 15,2023 to Oct 30,2023 with immediate effect. The development authority has also agreed to refund the participation fee, EMD amount, if any paid by the bidders for any of its e Auction scheduled in these dates.
Earlier, the Chief Secretary, Punjab, Anurag Verma had already directed the GMADA and similar authorities like PUDA, PDA, JDA, GLADA, ADA to conduct the e-Auctions of all the properties as per transparent manner, policies of chief minister.
The National Informatics Centre (NIC) authorities has raised points and alerted the authorities that “ e-Auction platform seems insecure and highly vulnerable to cyber security threats along with other loopholes in the system. Immediate measures and enforcement to plug vulnerable points are warranted to avoid any cyber attack or possible manual manipulation.”
As per available information, the GMADA, PUDA and similar authorities’ e-Auction platform was not fully secured. E-Auction solution of PUDA has been implemented by nextTenders (agency) since 2017. The portal was last security audited in the year 2017, that too on the request of PUDA. The guidelines recommend application security audit once in a year at least or after every upgrade year were not implemented.
“There is no encryption mechanism during transmission. The portal does not have two-factor authentication for bidders. Database logs are separately provided by agency to PUDA for audit which are never scrutinized said an official on the condition of anonymity.
royalpatiala.in NEWS Impact: GMADA cancelled/ withdrawn e-Auctions ; authority to refund fees/ emd paid by bidders. The chief secretary had already issued a strongly worded letter to the officers of the housing and urban department and had warned the concerned officers that, “it shall be your personal responsibility to ensure that all e-Auctions of GMADA and other Authorities of Housing and Urban Development Department are conducted only on a platform/system certified to be fully secure by National Informatics Centre (NIC) as well as Department of Governance Reforms. This is necessary to ensure that GMADA/similar Authorities earn maximum revenue and also that nobody is able to raise any finger at e-Auctions of GMADA and similar Authorities.”
