MANILA, Philippines -- A consortium disqualified from the bidding of the Land Transportation Office's (LTO) IT system project has sought intervention from Malacañang.

"The consortium pre-qualified and submitted the lowest bid with a wide margin from the second lowest bid," the group of Digitext Asia Corp., Trimax IT Infrastructure and Services, and Newtech Media Solutions and Trading Corp. said in a letter to President Benigno C. Aquino III.

"However, our bid was disqualified on very suspicious grounds that we have no other recourse but to raise the issue to your Excellency in order to avert an action that will be highly disadvantageous to the government," the consortium added in the letter dated March 13.

The consortium last month was disqualified due to its lack of a valid mayor's permit for 2012 and its non-submission of a bill of quantities of items proposed.

After it was taken out of the bidding race, the next lowest bidder, Fritz & Macziol, is now undergoing post-qualification process.

LTO conducted a bidding to upgrade its IT system and make the recovery of stolen vehicles easier, better prevent double registration, and improve the monitoring of unregistered vehicles.