SEZ for IT to create 50,000 jobs

SEZ for IT to create 50,000 jobs
Vijay Times

Bangalore: If the State Government doesn’t botch up, there is more good news for the Bangalore IT industry, besides Devanahalli International Airport. A special economic zone for the City’s telecom and knowledge industry may soon come before the Cabinet for approval.

The Cabinet nod would set in motion a Rs 2,000 crore project that would be executed over the next seven or eight years in three phases. The project would create infrastructure including fibre connectivity, teleport, internet data warehousing facilities and captive power plants over 166 acres of land near Hoskote on the Bangalore-Chennai highway. The additional investments that would flow in through IT companies setting up operations in the SEZ would reportedly create employment opportunities for over 50,000 people.

In April 2003, the State Government approved the SEZ and agreed to provide incentives and concessions as per the Mahiti Millennium Policy. It was also decided that KIADB would notify 166 acres of BDA land at Bidarahalli as industrial land and allot it to the project. On Oct 13, 2003, Union Ministry of Commerce and Industry decided to recommend the grant of ‘in-principle’ approval for setting up SEZ at Bangalore for telecom and IT activities.

The Office Memorandum even noted, “Seeing that this activity has great potential, an area of approximately 200 acres adjoining the Zone may be informally reserved for being used to expand this project later.”

After that, just when Chennai and Kolkata were bolstering their IT infrastructure, the Bangalore SEZ project was put to sleep due to assembly election, change of government and lack of co-ordination between different departments. Highly-placed sources in KIADB, which have to notify land, said they had no knowledge of the project. Sources in IT department said SEZs, IT or not, fell outside their jurisdictional limits.

However, BDA Commissioner Vidyashankar told Vijay Times that he had received Government orders to hand over the land to KIADB and that he was proceeding accordingly.

The Central Government seems to be more keen on saving Bangalore’s IT industry than the State Government.