Karnataka legislators to receive laptops as mementoes

Legislators in Karnataka will soon receive laptops from the Government as a memento marking the fiftieth year of the State’s formation.

In keeping with Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy’s promise in the matter, the Karnataka Legislature Secretariat has given its approval for supply of 300 laptops, each costing about Rs 55,000. The mementoes will cost the Government about Rs 16.5 million.

The contract for supply of laptops to the legislators was bagged by Acer, which edged out Wipro, HCL and Keltron in the competition. The laptops enjoying a three-year warranty possess 80 GB hard disk, 1.83 GHz processer, besides CDMA and blue tooth technology, which provide the user with wireless connectivity.

Though the Assembly Speaker Krishna has asked Acer to supply the laptops before the conclusion of the coming Legislature session starting on January 25, officials in the State Secretariat are circumspect about the ability of the legislators to operate computers.

“Though there is a provision for the legislators to e-mail the questions they wish to raise during the proceedings of the legislature, they still write and either post the questions to us or drop them in the box kept in the State Secretariat”, according to a senior official.

Besides, this is not the first time the legislators had been given computers by the Government. During 98-99, when late Chief Minister J H Patel was at the helm in the State, each legislator was given Rs 50,000 to purchase computers. Though the Legislature Secretariat had asked the legislators to submit the receipts for the purchase, not even 50 per cent of them complied with the directions.

Even during the tenure of former Chief Minister S M Krishna, the members of the Legislative Assembly, who were not members of the Assembly during the previous tenure, were given Rs 50,000 to purchase computers. “Less than 40 per cent of them submitted bills for the purchase”, an officer said.

Even when Kumaraswamy announced that laptops would be given to the legislators as a gift on the occasion of the fiftieth year of the State’s formation, a section of the legislators suggested that they be given cash so that notebooks of their choice could be purchased.

But, Governor T N Chaturvedi is understood to have intervened and write to the Chief Minister against providing cash to the legislators. The Governor insisted on supplying computers in view of the failure of a majority of legislators to comply with the direction on submitted bills for the purchase on the previous occasion.