Kolkata's project on e-auction of tea has failed to take-off due technical glitches, lack of space and difficulty in allowing proxy bidders. The e-auction of tea in Kolkata which was to start from January 27, 2009, was carried out but only manually on January 27 and 28, 2009.
This new e-auction system, an INR 18-crore project, has been redesigned by the National Stock Exchange's IT department. According to tea traders, the major bottleneck in the e-auction of tea is that it would not only translate into an escalation of costs but the process would also become slower than the manual auctions. Moreover this e-auction platform will create a problem in proxy-bidding. In the e-auction structure, if a person is authorised to bid for two firms, then he will require two terminals or if he is logged in as buyer A, then he will have to log out and again log in as buyer B. And the seating capacity in the Kolkata auction centre is also not sufficient to accommodate all the buyers.
