ALAPPUZHA: Senior Congress leader Ramesh Chennithala has demanded an apology from Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Cooperation Minister V N Vasavan following a High Court order that stayed further proceedings in a software tender deal involving cooperative societies in Kerala.
The HC intervention came after it found prima facie evidence of misappropriation in the project to install software in 4,415 branches of 1,612 cooperative societies across the state. Chennithala said the ruling vindicated his allegations. He said the CM had ridiculed his exposure of the alleged attempt to award the contract to CPM-backed Dinesh Cooperative Society consortium, despite its significantly higher bid. He also accused Vasavan of trivialising the issue with remarks that compared the allegation to predicting the horoscope of an unborn child.
Chennithala alleged that the tender process was manipulated to favour the Dinesh consortium. He claimed that reputed companies, including TCS, were effectively kept out of the bidding process.
The row centres on differences in bids. While Malabar Information Technology (MITCO) quoted Rs 231.7 crore to implement the software across all branches, Dinesh consortium quoted Rs 49.9 crore for just 280 branches. This translates to an estimated Rs 5.24 lakh per branch by MITCO, compared to Rs 17.8 lakh per branch by Dinesh group. If extended statewide, Chennithala said, the Dinesh bid would raise the project cost to nearly Rs 785 crore, about Rs 550 crore higher than MITCO’s proposal.
