Kerala: Keltron taking government for a ‘ride’

Arjun Raghunath
The New Indian Express
19 Nov 2010

THIRUVANATHAPURAM: Taking undue advantage of the state government's decision to place orders for various projects with Keltron without inviting tenders, the state Public Sector Undertaking is suspected to be fleecing the government by collecting exorbitant rates.
While Keltron recently installed the biometric finger-print-based attendance management system at the Secretariat at a cost of Rs 62.7 lakh, private players claim that they could have installed the same system at one-third of the cost.
A prestigious project of the Police Department to install surveillance cameras along the Thiruvananthapuram-Kollam National Highway is also held up owing to the exorbitant rate quoted by Keltron, it is learnt.
With the state government asking all the directorates to install biometric punching system, Keltron is hoping to present magical figures in its fiscal results for the coming years. There are more than 80 directorates under the state government and Keltron has already approached most of them.
Keltron had charged Rs 62.7 lakh for installing the entire system, which includes Rs 40.8 lakh for the Biometric Smart Card-based Attendance Management System and Rs 21.9 lakh for web-based customised software for managing the attendance, additional hardware and technical manpower support. A total of 42 punching machines have been installed at the Secretariat, which means that the average cost for one unit came to around Rs 1.5 lakh. Keltron had procured the hardware from a Mysore-based firm.
While 'Express' enquired with a couple of suppliers of punching machines in the state, they claimed that the actual cost of the most-advanced finger-print-based punching machine would be only around Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000. Keltron officials claim that they had provided imported hardware.
But the private parties clarify that almost all the hardware associated with punching systems that are commonly used in India are imported.
It is widely alleged that Keltron is playing the role of a middleman and reaping undue benefit.
Earlier, there was a government directive that government departments, organisations and public sector units shall place orders for direct purchase of computer and other hardware with Keltron. However, it was later relaxed by the government as private players were denied an opportunity.
Even then, many government agencies are still placing direct purchase orders with Keltron by violating the Store Purchases rules of the state government, according to which any purchase above Rs 20,000 has to be made only through tendering process.
It was as part of the much-hyped Thiruvananthapuram-Kollam model road project that the Police Department decided to install around 15 cameras along the stretch so as to check traffic rule violations. Keltron is learnt to have quoted Rs 20 lakh per camera, which is many times higher than estimated by the Police Department. Hence, the project has come to a standstill.