E-voting: Seven IT majors vie to provide online solution

Will conduct mock e-polling to show SEC their capability for the task

As manny as seven IT companies, national as well as multinational, have participated in the bid to provide total solution for online voting in October 2010 municipal elections in the state. The bidders include Microsoft, IBM, TCS, Wipro, CMC, HCL and ILNFS. The tenders will be opened on June 22.

There are two parts of the tender process: technical and commercial. The technical aspect will be evaluated by the State Election Commission (SEC) to find out whether these companies have the technical capability and capacity to meet the requirements of e-voting. These companies will be asked to make presentations before IT experts of the SEC and carry out mock e-polling to convince that they are capable for the job.

The commercial bids of only those companies will be opened that make it to the technical evaluation. According to State Election Commissioner K C Kapoor, technical evaluation would comprise 70 per cent of the bid and commercial bid would account for the rest 30 per cent.

State to keep copyright
An important aspect of the bid is that companies to be selected by the poll commission will have to sign an agreement with the government that they would not replicate the e-voting methodology developed here. Kapoor said that since the methodology would be developed at the expenditure provided by the Gujarat government, it will retain its copyright and companies involved in developing the technology would have no right to pass it on to any other state.

He added the company could develop the system for another state only if they pay 20 per cent of their income of that project to the state government by way of copyright.

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