Manmohan promises to make Bangalore world class

Manmohan promises to make Bangalore world class

Vijay Times News

Bangalore: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday promised to assist the State Government with all help to upgrade Bangalore's infrastructure and make it "a world class city."

Speaking to reporters here, he said Bangalore was the pride of India and IT capital of the country which had put India on the world map. "We will be working with the State Government to ensure that Bangalore has a world class infrastructure."

Asked whether Bangalore would get a special package in the coming budget, the Prime Minister said he could not reveal the "budget secrets", but hinted that the budget would contain a major thrust towards development of infrastructure and Karnataka would also stand to benefit from it.

Expressing his happiness that all sources of funding for the Bangalore International Airport had been identified and the project had been taken up in right earnest, he hoped that the Metro Rail project would also come up as scheduled.

Manmohan Singh said the Metro Rail would be on a public-private partnership basis and if necessary external sources would be tapped on the lines of Delhi Metro.

The Prime Minister said during his review meeting with the ministers and officials of State Government on Friday he had noted that efforts were being made for accelerated development of infrastructure of Bangalore and also the rest of Karnataka.

He said he was impressed with the roadmap drawn by the State in the areas of irrigation, drinking water, rural connectivity, flow of credit to farmers and strengthening of the cooperative sector.