Thiruvananthapuram | Kerala Industries Minister P Rajeeve on Friday termed as 'baseless' the controversy over the installation of Artificial Intelligence cameras as part of the 'Safe Kerala' project, and said the tender process was completely transparent.
At a press meet here, Rajeeve cited the report filed in this regard by Industries Department Principal Secretary, and said all the concerned documents in connection with the project were in public domain.
The Congress party has been raising corruption charges against the 'Safe Kerala' project, which aims to reduce road accidents and traffic violations in the state, since its inauguration in April.
"State-run KELTRON's tender process for the Safe Kerala project was completely transparent and all due procedures were followed. All concerned documents are in public domain as those were uploaded in the e-portal from then itself," the minister said.
He pointed out that except for the data security, data integrity and configuration of technical management equipment, the agreement permits subcontracts for all other processes.
"The agreement is between Keltron and the private company. However, the report has observed that there was no need to mention the sub-contractors in the agreement." The contract for the project by Keltron was awarded to a Bengaluru-based company after issuing a tender.
Rajeeve added that the project was handed over to Keltron based on the recommendation of a technical committee.
The Congress has claimed that the AI camera project should have cost less than Rs 100 crore, but was completed at double the cost of Rs 232 crore.
The opposition party leaders have been alleging that the Left government had indulged in irregularities in awarding the tender to the private company for setting up a fully-automated traffic enforcement system.
The Kerala government had in 2020 entered into an agreement with Keltron for the project.
In April this year, Vijayan had inaugurated the 'Safe Kerala' project, which included installation of the AI cameras, envisaged to reduce road accidents and traffic violations in the state.
