Is Confed becoming authoritarian?

It is bizarre to see the controversy surrounding Confed-ITA-a consortium of IT dealers across Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, known to work in the interests of dealers-leading a new direction of its high-handedness.
Recently, Confed was in the limelight for its abrupt decision on next year's president elect without a consensus from its executive members.
This time the problem is around its Akshyam project. This project was envisioned to attract sponsors for Confed summits held every year, primarily for general body meeting. However, for the second version of Akshyam held this year in Coimbatore, vendor companies agreed for sponsorships with a quid pro quo that Confed buys a certain amount of laptops from them.

The deal

According to the information available, HP was the main sponsor contributing 15 lakh for the event, supplying 1,000 laptops. Lenovo-the co-sponsor of this event-gave Rs 8 lakhs and supplied 500 laptops.  
HP's thousand laptops were supplied to the members without any hassles but problems surfaced during the supply of Lenovo machines, says Confed ex-president, Muthuswamy, who played a crucial role in steering Confed activities during his tenure.
Irregularities
Citing irregularity, he claims that only 150 units were supplied to members and the rest were sold to non-members and online retailers. This, he says, is the violation of guidelines amidst the recent Confed measures to tackle online threat.

He said that there may a be huge amount of money involved. "The devil is in the details as each laptop came with 18% discounts as vendors supplied it in subsidized prices, which was supposed to benefit only our members. But there is no trace of the remaining 350 units." 

Things get murkier as per the claims of Muthuswamy when Lenovo's sponsorship money used to pass on further discounts to the members as they were not able to sell all units. He adds, "This is bizarre because as per the IDC data Tamil Nadu sells around 19,000 laptops a month, inclusive of all brands. I am surprised if 500 laptops could not be sold; if at all 500 were supplied."

When asked about the basis of his findings, he said that the issue came to his notice from some members and when enquired there was no response from the current president (Muttaih Pillai). He stated, "I asked the him including the office bearers to name the members whom machines were supplied to. But they declined to name them." 

Need for clarification

If at all the allegations are found out to be true, it would entail a serious problem within the Confed as Muttiah Pillai himself was quoted in Channel Times on the threat of online retail, saying, "I found that online trading and the large format retails are becoming the biggest threat for us. At least these retail shops are hitting the business only in the bigger towns. However, the online trading has become the biggest threat for us as it covers even remote villages, or any location that has an internet connection."

However, The DQ Week could not get his version as several calls made to Muttiah Pillai and vice president- K Natrajan did not elicit any response.  
But an executive committee member from Coimbatore, K Mohan, did not agree to the allegations. He says that although one faction of people is claiming of irregularities but there is no proof. He adds, "If these people show any kind of documented evidence then there could be some action."
Various other sources also conceded to the need of clarification on modalities of Akshayam-II project. However, Jeyakumar KK of Computer Traders Association of Tuticorin as well as Suresh Kumar TT of Association for Computer Traders - Trichy, both presidents, did confirm the ongoing confusion over the Akshyam-II project, but did not speak anything concrete on this issue.

Abrupt decision

These two presidents mentioned above, however, spoke on the issue of abrupt presidential election where the current vice-president M Natarajan was elevated to the post of president.
Jeyakumar said that there has to be a system of " round rover" where office bearers of one particular association cannot hold a post consecutively for the next year and the chance goes to the other regions. He added. "The post of vice president is currently held by Natarajan who is from Coimbatore. Now he is again made the president. This time it was Niligiri association's chance and we strongly oppose this."
Suresh Kumar TT was also aware about this situation but says that this is a regional problem  

 But D Ramakrishnan, president, Niligiris IT Association lashed out on the current leadership.  He said, "Earlier Pollachi's was unable to nominate their candidate hence the turn went to Coimbatore. For the upcoming year, the presidential nomination was supposed to be from Nilgiris. However, without any consensus president election has been done."  

But Mohan deferred from these views and stated that the current leadership has followed an ethical code of conduct.

He adds, "The "round rover" systems is applicable only in zones but there is no bye-laws as such, to follow this system, within the zones."  
Note: An executive committee meeting is scheduled on 28 September in Dindigul. Watch out for more updates on this issue.