3 Things Express Investigation: All bids for Uttarakhand project linked to Ramdev aide
Sep 16, 2025
In this enlightening discussion, Aiswarya Raj, who reports on Uttarakhand for The Indian Express, and Dheeraj Mishra from the business bureau dive deep into a controversial bidding process for a tourism project. They reveal how all three bidders are connected to Acharya Balkrishna, close aide of Baba Ramdev, raising serious questions about collusion. The conversation uncovers the implications of these findings on integrity and fairness in public tenders, and discusses the larger issues of transparency and crony capitalism impacting the project.
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Single-Owner Bids Raise Red Flags
- The Uttarakhand tourism tender for 142 acres near Mussoorie became a showpiece project with helicopter and adventure tourism plans.
- All three bidders for the 2022 tender shared a common major shareholder, Acharya Balkrishna, revealing a concentrated interest in the asset.
Enforce Clear Tender Benchmarks
- Tender processes must separate technical and financial bids to ensure fair competition and price discovery.
- Require transparent benchmarks and public scrutiny to prevent a small set of qualified entities from dominating a bid.
Tender Secrecy Is Price Discovery
- Tendering exists primarily to discover market price through sealed, secret financial bids.
- Collusion among bidders defeats this mechanism and can leave public assets undervalued.