The Hindu : Kerala News : Bid to defraud the State using IPRs

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Sunday, Aug 01, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

Bid to defraud the State using IPRs

By P. Venugopal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, JULY 31. Top officials of the Information Kerala Mission (IKM) were allegedly the central characters of a conspiracy to defraud the State of large sums of money on a permanent basis using Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) on the software developed for the `Friends' citizen integrated services, according to papers made available to The Hindu today.

In the beginning 2000, the Government asked the State-owned Centre for Development of Imaging Technology (C-DiT) to prepare the software required for `FRIENDS', envisaged as a hassle-free facility for the citizens to pay their bills on various services like water supply, power supply, telephone, etc.

Unsolicited suggestion

This was outsourced by the then C-DiT leadership, acting on the basis of an unsolicited suggestion from the executive mission director of the IKM, which, being the Government agency solely in charge of the panchayat computerisation programme in the State, had nothing to do with the `FRIENDS' experiment.

The IKM's executive mission director wrote to C-DiT that "Microsoft had proposed that they would involve Comtech IT Solutions... in developing jointly with C-DiT an application for the `FRIENDS' citizens integrated services."

On the basis of this suggestion, Comtech developed the software jointly with C-DiT and supplied it to the Government "free of cost", with the Microsoft India providing a sum of Rs. 1,55,000 as development cost to Comtech.

"Free of cost" exercise

This was installed in the first `FRIENDS' facility that came up in Thiruvananthapuram "free of cost".

However, it soon became quite clear that the "free of cost" exercise was only a platform-laying tactic to ensure the flow of money from the State exchequer on a permanent basis to the private IT company, which, incidentally, is run by the brother of a person employed with the IKM.

When the `FRIENDS' facility was extended to the remaining 13 district headquarters, the C-DiT was billed Rs. 13 lakhs by Comtech towards IPRs.

A further sum of Rs. 14 lakhs was billed subsequently for additions made to the software, when newer services were introduced into the `FRIENDS' facility.

"The Government's plan is to extend the `FRIENDS' facility to all the panchayats and towns in the State. At the rate at which IPRs was being claimed, crores of rupees would have gone to the private company by the time the facility is introduced all over the State," says the present registrar of C-DiT, Achuth Sankar.

Alternative software

Finding the situation quite disadvantageous to the Government, the C-DiT developed alternative software, with full rights to the C-DiT itself.

When the C-DiT refused to entertain fresh bills on the software after the shift to the new software, the company went to court producing a certificate issued by an official designated as the `major account manager' of Microsoft India, in support of its claim that it owned the IPRs on the software.

It was also alleged that the new software was a copy of the first. The Kerala High Court, however, rejected the plea.

"There are lessons to be learned from this incident for all public sector organisations. We should be on the vigil all the time to ensure that we do not become the victims of the intellectual fraud being practiced on us," Mr. Sankar said.

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