Wipro may lose out on criminal tracking project

The Centre is understood to be doing a re-think on a ministry of home affairs's tender on developing a criminal tracking system which was expected to be awarded to Wipro Technologies.

The project, in its entirety, is estimated to be about Rs 2,000 crore (Rs 20 billion).

The core technology platform will be laid out by the National Crime Records Bureau and each state will develop its own criminal tracking system since police is a state subject.

The three IT firms competing for the project -- Wipro, TCS and Accenture -- have bid for developing the core application software for the Centre's ambitious Crime and Criminal Tracking Networks and Systems project which is worth about Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million).

Despite being the lowest commercial bidder to develop the solutions, Wipro Technologies is in the danger of losing it owing to technical issues pertaining to the tender.

The Bangalore-based company has emerged as L1 bidder (lowest commercial bidder) after the opening of the tender recently. Wipro, which has quoted Rs 29 crore (Rs 290 million) for the tender, is followed by TCS which quoted Rs 33 crore (Rs 330 million) and Accenture (Accenture's quote not known).

However, after the opening of the tender, it was found that an 'important pricing component was missing' in the tender papers submitted by Wipro which resulted in the other two companies (TCS and Accenture) pressing for the cancellation of the tender.

"The tender seem to be in a limbo and no one knows its fate. If things are not sorted out, the government might go in for a re-bid," highly-placed industry sources privy to the development told Business Standard.

On being asked, Wipro's government vertical head Ranvir Singh wished not to comment saying the bid was "under evaluation". A TCS spokesperson said the company would not like to comment.

A mission mode project, CCTNS is a Rs 2,000-crore (Rs 20-billion) project which aims to create a technology platform for sharing crime and criminal information (in the form of a web-based criminal record database) across the country.

This is expected to streamline investigation and prosecution processes, and strengthen intelligence-gathering machinery. The system will facilitate collection, storage, retrieval, analyses and transfer of data among police stations, district and state headquarters, and the controlling agencies at the central level.

However, since the police is a state subject, a vast majority of this money (Rs 2,000 crore or Rs 20 billion) will be spent by states to implement the project at the state level.

The IT firm bagging the contract at the central level will create an architecture using an application programming interface which will allow the systems set up by each states to speak to each other.

This will be used as a standard by individual states.

"The winner of the project at the central level will in an advantageous position in terms of clinching deals at the state level owing to its know-how of the technology platform it is creating at the central level," said industry sources.

Image: Azim Premji