Tender for free laptops after court decision

June 21, 2015 12:00 am | Updated 05:47 am IST - CHENNAI:

The award of tender to successful bidders for supplying over 11 lakh free laptops to students in the third phase of the scheme by the State government through the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu Limited (ELCOT) would be subject to the result of a petition, which is pending before the Madras High Court.

Hearing a miscellaneous petition by M/s ICMC Corporation Limited, which alleged that three prominent bidders - M/s Hewlet-Packard Sales, M/s Acer India (Pvt) Ltd and Lenovo (India) Pvt. Ltd. that participated in the earlier tenders violated the rules by sourcing laptops from China, Justice M. Sathyanarayanan said that the tender process as well as any decision taken to award the contract would be subject to the result of the main petition. However, it was open to the ELCOT to consider and dispose of the representations thrice made by the petitioner company in accordance with law and inform the company of the decision taken, the judge said further posted the matter for July 21. Government advocate S. Pattabiraman took notice for the Information Technology Department Secretary-cum-Chairman of ELCOT. The petition filed by the company sought an interim stay of all further proceedings of the tender dated November 1, 2014 issued by ELCOT as a writ petition was pending over the matter before the High Court.

Counsel appearing for the petitioner invited the attention of the High Court to the conditions of the supply and commissioning of laptop computers throughout the State for 2014-15 and 2015-16 and contended it was in violation of the tender conditions.

Observing that these three companies that participated in the earlier tenders "admittedly" do not have any manufacturing facilities in India and this year too their claim in the tender for the fourth and fifth phases was likely to be considered positively, the counsel said. The petition also sought a direction to ELCOT to forfeit the security deposits of the three bidders dated July 20, 2013 and to further declare them as ineligible to participate in the tender dated November 1, 2014 for Phase IV & V.

Hewlet-Packard, Acer India and Lenovo sourced laptops from China, says petitioner

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