IBM has been shortlisted by the income tax department for supply of servers for its proposed national data centre. IBM beat HP and Sun-Wipro in the race for the Rs 250-crore tender.

The proposed national data centre is crucial to the single data processing system. The much-touted zone-free filing of income tax returns is contingent to setting up of a single data centre. Under zone-free filing a tax payer residing in one city or a locality can file his or her income tax return anywhere in India. They would also be able to get their income tax refund from any part of the country.

At present, the department has 36 data processing centres each with a separate server. Since the data is stored on separate servers, transfer of data like permanent account number crucial to filing of return cannot happen. When all the data is stored on one server, an assessing officer would be able to transfer PAN from one circle to another, facilitating filing of zone-free return, sources said.

The income tax department had floated the tender for servers in September this year. This was a revised tender mentioning specific guidelines including the evaluation criterion. The department had earlier floated the tender in April, but had cancelled it as the tender document did not mention evaluation norms specifically.

Earlier, IBM, HP-TCS and Sun-Wipro had given technical bids and financial bids were not called as the tender was cancelled. HP had gone solo this time.