Rajasthan association-Raj IT Forum slugfest continues

New Delhi: Rajasthan Computers Traders
Association
(RCTA) is once again facing flak from Raj IT Forum, regarding the
"non-professional" attitude of the association. The forum has
accused RCTA of charging different amounts of membership fee from
distributors, which reveals the lack of uniformity in the policies of
the association.

Elaborating on the
variations in the
membership fee, Raj IT Forum has circulated a mail among Jaipur
dealers stating that RCTA has charged Rs 11,000 from Compuage
Infocom, Rs 2,100 from Rashi Peripherals, Rs 2,100 from Supertron, Rs
2,100 from Fortune Marketing, and other regional distributors of
Sony, Seagate, Mron and HCL have paid Rs 1,100 or 2,100.

Raj IT Forum has further
accused RCTA
of collecting money from companies but not conducting any activities
for the welfare of Rajasthan trade business.

The forum also alleges that
even after
eight months of election, no general body meeting has been conducted
so far.

Clarifying the whole issue,
Raj Kumar
Poonia, President, RCTA said, "The membership fee of RCTA is Rs
2,100 but there is no flat rate. If any discussion is going on with
distributors at different levels and for some reason the company is
eager to pay us a higher amount, what is wrong in that? We are not
forcing anybody, but at some levels of negotiation, if the company is
willing to pay extra for the welfare of the association there is
noting wrong in that and we welcome it."

Speaking on the comments
made by
members of Raj IT Forum, Poonia said, "It is their opinion that
RCTA is not professional. The forum is a group of members who have
the liberty to express their opinion."

Speaking about the members
of Raj IT
Forum, Poonia remarked, "Arvind Modi is a respectable member of
RCTA, but he wants to be elected as the President unanimously which
did not happen in the last few elections. He was President of the
association a long time back but since he has not been chosen by
members in this election he expresses his annoyance through such
forums. Rupesh Kedia was earlier in the IT business of Jaipur but now
he is not a member of RCTA and neither is he involved in IT business.
He is doing business in China and visits Jaipur regularly. When he is
here for months, he engages himself by playing politics in the IT
business. Kailash Gupta is one of the members of Raj IT Forum who has
been actively helping us in carrying out activities and agendas. He
always has a positive attitude and gives suggestions rather than
criticism."

Replying to the remark made
by Poonia,
Arvind Modi of Bits & Bytes, who is currently holidaying in
Europe, clarified, "I never wanted to become President. Poonia has
deliberately chosen this time to make such comments knowing very well
that I cannot respond as I am abroad."

Throwing light on the issue
of absence
of any general body meet after the election, Poonia said that the new
tenure had started from April 2009, and since RCTA is busy preparing
for the IT expo to be held in July, it is not possible to conduct a
general body meeting at the same time.

"We can only have one event
at a time
as a general body meeting also needs fund allocation. Currently we
are putting all our efforts into organizing the expo. Once that is
done, we will organize the meet," said Poonia.

When contacted, Kailash
Gupta from Raj
IT Forum stated, "RCTA has been active and is organizing its IT
expo in the coming months. In that respect there is no issue. But
there are only six executive members of RCTA who are responsible for
everything and among the six only one or two are active. In my
opinion, RCTA should have formed a constitution of 17 members and
should have delegated all the members with different tasks so that
their actions would have been more visible."

He further said that Raj IT
Forum is an
open platform. It is not restricted to RCTA members and the main
concern is to raise and solve the issues prevailing in the market.