HYDERABAD, June 28: The Telangana Government has invited bids for designing and implementing the ‘One Telangana Card’, a smart card ecosystem, which can be used for payment related to travel services in the state, a senior government
official said Friday.
Principal secretary of IT and Industries Jayesh Ranjan
said the common card system was aimed at integrating the
payments related to travel services availed of by the
residents and visitors in Hyderabad Metro Rail, Telangana
State Road Transport Corporation buses, Hyderabad Multi-Modal
Transport System, autorickshaws, Ola, Uber cabs and others
within the state.
This is a state government initiative. We are
looking for a consortium to participate in this project. The
consortium should have a bank or financial institution as one
of the partners. There has to be payment clearing house. There
has to be a vendor who will supply machines (to read smart
cards),” the official said.
Dubbed as ‘one nation, one card’, Prime Minister
Narendra Modi launched the indigenously-developed National
Common Mobility Card (NCMC) in March to enable people to pay
multiple kinds of transport charges, including metro services
and toll tax, across the country.
“The Centre has also announced NCMC. We have decided
that we will go ahead with our own card and as and when some
national card is launched we will integrate ours with it,”
Ranjan further said.
The successful bidder is expected to manage the
implementation of smart card payments ecosystem, including the
required hardware, software, network infrastructure, and
related interfaces and should be able to manage the interfaces
to Hyderabad Metro Rail, Hyderabad MMTS, TSRTC bus network
necessary for the implementation of Common Card Mobility
Project in the city, the request for proposal (RFP) document
said.
A senior official of Telangana State Technological
Services which had issued RFP from prospective bidders said
pre-bid meeting was held in June first week.
The bidding would be closed by July 15. (PTI)