Haryana blacklists SBI Life for delaying annuity payments
SBI Life Insurance company has been "blacklisted" by Haryana government for allegedly delaying the process of distribution of annuity to land owners under the Resettlement and Rehabilitation (R&R) Policy of the state government.While giving this information in an release here today, an official spokesman of the Finance Department said, "Haryana government has blacklisted SBI Life Insurance Company Limited and cancelled the bid awarded to it for delaying the entire process of distribution of annuity to the land owners under the state’s R&R policy."
He further said stringent actions, including debarring SBI Life Insurance from doing any further business with the State or any of its department could also be taken as per the law.
The official spokesman said that an Expression of interest (EOI) was issued in February, 2011 inviting bids from Insurance Companies or Banks for purposes of providing services for disbursement of annuity to the land owners under R&R policy of the state government.
The bid cum tender document was submitted by SBI Life Insurance on March 31, 2011. He said that after receipt of the bid documents, several rounds of negotiations and discussions were held with respect to various stipulations and conditions stated in the draft Service Level Agreement (SLA) including the obligation of the noticee as service provider with respect to collection and validation of data of the beneficiaries.
The spokesman further said decisions regarding the contract were taken by the government on July 25, 2011 and August 11, 2011 for making payment of annuity under R&R policy by allocation of work amongst the selected insurance companies. A letter of intent (LoI) was issued to noticee on September 6, 2011.
The said LoI was also issued on specific and unambiguous stipulation that the LoI would be subject to execution of Service Level Agreement (SLA).
This was expressly communicated to the noticee that the government reserved its right to withdraw the said LOI in the event of failure of noticee to execute the Service Level Agreement, he added.
He said that the State Government in performance of its obligation as expressed under the LOI duly advanced payment in favour of noticee towards 50 per cent purchase consideration and allocated area of operation to noticee.
The noticee accepted the said advance payment knowing fully well that the state government has rejected its repeated requests for a change in the fundamentals of the EOI that is collection and validation of data, the official said.
In so far as the government was concerned, the issue relating to data was resolved, and the noticee had accepted the said condition of collection and validation of data, he further added.
He said that in furtherance of the agreed and accepted condition of LOI, the government vide its letter dated January 4, 2012 forwarded the SLA duly approved by it and called upon the noticee to sign the same with its concerned departments.
However, despite repeated reminders, including ones dated January 27, 2012 and February 3, 2012, for execution of the SLA, SBI Life failed to execute the same again for the same "frivolous" reasons of non deletion of the clause relating to the collection and validation of data, he said.
0 comments: