bengaluru the bruhat bengaluru mahanagara palikes ambitious pod taxi project to ease traffic congestion has received only one bid that the embassy group is one of the three partners in the consortium that has made the sole bid has raised serious questions of conflict of interest given that the realestate firm has a longstanding business partnership with bengaluru development minister kj georgewhile civic experts seek a recall of the tender embassy group chairman and managing director jitu virwani told toi mr george being apartner has become a liability to the firm even when they are trying to help the city when contacted george said i agree with this viewthe bid from the smart personal rapid transit systems delhibased firm which runs the pod system in heathrow is in line with our objective of supporting bengalurus infrastructure virwani saidthe bbmp had called for a global tender on november 10 2017 under the design build finance operate and transfer or the ppp modelpalike should call for tender again expertthe last day for submission of bid documents was extended by almost a month to january 10 2018 with bbmp claiming long holiday season in december as the reason for slack or no responseas on thursday the only bid made was by the consortium comprising smart personal rapid transit systems ultra prt and embassy property developments weve received the bank guarantee details of only one bidder if firms have made the security payment in cash it will reflect on the eprocurement portal on friday technical bids will open on friday praveen lingaiah executive engineer traffic engineering cell saidurban expert ashwin mahesh said as per the karnataka transparency in public procurements act 1999 the practice is to cancel the tender and issue a new one if there is only one company even after the second call then the civic agency can go ahead with the contract he said lack of bidders indicates the podtaxi market had no vital value v ravichandar urban expert echoed maheshs views and said the palike should ideally call for the tender again