The State government has decided to purchase 40 lakh more colour television sets as part of its project of distributing the sets free to people.
This would be the fifth installment of the purchase of colour TVs. Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi made an announcement in this regard on Thursday after chairing a meeting of leaders of legislature parties at the Secretariat.
Global bids would be floated shortly. By the middle of December, they would be opened and by third week of next month, the contracts would be settled. Starting from February 2010, the distribution would go on up to December. Those tender specifications adopted for the fourth phase of the project would be adopted now also.
Another decision was that additionally, 8,37,500 colour TVs would be procured under the fourth phase of the project.
In the four installments, the TVs were distributed to 85, 15,343 households at a cost of about Rs. 2,036.69 crore. The permission was given for covering 1.04 crore households and the amount sanctioned was about Rs. 2267.87 crore.
Those who attended the Thursday meeting were M.K. Stalin, Deputy Chief Minister, D.Sudarssanam (Congress), C. Govindasamy (Communist Party of India-Marxist), V. Sivapunniyam (CPI), H. Abdul Basith (Indian Union Muslim League), M. Jagan Moorthy (Puratchi Bharatam) and D. Ravikumar (Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi).
