Unfair terms for police cloth purchase bid hint at graft

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Thiruvananthapuram: A controversy is brewing in the police department following a decision to purchase clothing for its personnel. Earlier, a decision to coat police stations across the state with the same paint from a specific company, too, had run into a controversy.
A row over uniform fabric erupted when a consignment from a particular textile firm reached the police canteens for distribution. It has been alleged that a police association leader had tried to boost its sale by claiming in his WhatsApp message the cloth was procured from the government-run Kerala Textile Corporation (KTC).
The cloth was in fact only examined and certified by the KTC, and was allegedly introduced to the canteens as a special corporation-certified product.
The procurement terms, meanwhile, were such that other firms cannot apply for the corporation’s certificate on time. The result: Only one company would get the order to supply the khaki cloth. It is suspected that the move would result in procuring the cloth without floating a tender.
A pair of uniform would require 3 m of clothing material, and one individual would require three pairs, making it 9 m for a person. The 60,000-member state police force would require 5.5 lakh m of clothing, and if a metre of cloth would have an estimated average cost of Rs 200, the present deal would raise Rs 11 crore for the textile firm.
The State police chief had earlier ordered that all police personnel should wear the same shade of khaki. It was, however, later revealed that an oral order, too, was issued to procure the cloth from a specific textile firm, after the Kozhikode city police commissioner, Kaliraj Mahesh Kumar, mentioned the company in his directive.
After Kumar’s order, the samples of the cloth were collected and tested. The KTC tested seven samples provided by the same company, and published the result on its website. An order, directing to distribute the same cloth through police canteens was issued soon after.
An establishment in the state capital has been distributing the cloth in all districts from Thiruvananthapuram to Ernakulam, despite it not being a recognised dealer. According to norms, only recognised dealers could distribute products through the police canteens.
The police headquarters, meanwhile, explained that the police personnel could purchase the uniform cloth from any firm that subscribed to the guidelines of samples published on the website.
Meanwhile, KTC managing director M Ganesh clarified that the corporation had not provided cloth for police uniforms. He, however, confirmed that the establishment had tested and published the results of seven samples provided to it.
Though the corporation had, three months ago, proposed to provided police uniform cloth, no decision was made on its offer.