Leader of Opposition V. D. Satheesan has alleged corruption in excess of ₹100 crore centered around the chief minister’s office in the acquisition and installation of Artificial Intelligence-enabled traffic offence detection systems spanning highways and arterial roads across the State under the Safe Kerala project.
₹100 crore scam
Addressing a press conference at the office of the District Congress Committee here on Saturday, Mr. Satheesan accused that the commercial proposal of ₹57 crore submitted by one of the companies enlisted for technical support for the Safe Kerala project was way too inflated than the prevailing market rates besides the systems proposed being outdated.
“The entire system including the cameras, control room, annual maintenance and the furniture would cost not more than ₹45 crore whereas the tender was for ₹151 crore. This reeks of corruption to the tune of more than ₹100 crore,” Mr. Satheesan alleged.
Chief minister’s relative
He further alleged that the chief minister’s relative Prakash Babu had attended a meeting of the first consortium of companies for the project and spoke extensively about it being a dream project. Mr. Satheesan said that the owner of Presadio Technologies Pvt. Ltd (a company that won the sub-contract in the project) had not denied the presence of the relative in the meeting. “We will produce the evidence proving his presence at the meeting if a probe is ordered by an appropriate agency,” he said in response to a challenge in this regard posed by Industries Minister P. Rajeeve on Friday.
Mr. Satheesan also challenged the government to come clean on whether any of the company that had withdrawn from the consortium had approached Mr. Babu to get their investments back since they need not approach someone who had nothing to do with the project.
He further alleged that a company that had backed out from the contract had written to the Industries principal secretary as back as October 23, 2021, about the alleged lack of transparency in the project citing among other things the non-transparency in the rate of materials to be procured. Hence, any probe by the Industries department into the corruption would be futile.
