Cabinet sub-committee to draft norms on land to IT firms

Cabinet sub-committee to draft norms on land to IT firms

The Hindu

To examine whether rules were flouted to accommodate IT companies

BANGALORE: A Cabinet sub-committee, headed by Deputy Chief Minister M.P. Prakash, will draft fresh guidelines for allotment of land in Bangalore and other cities for information technology companies that have placed requests for more land for expansion plans, it is learnt.

Sources said the State Cabinet, which met on Wednesday, discussed at length the request of Infosys Technologies for over 835 acres of land in the Hosur-Sarjapur area.

This has been a sore point with Janata Dal (Secular) President and former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda, who has never missed an opportunity to take a dig at Infosys chief mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy, and as recently as last week, made it very plain that he was unimpressed with Mr. Murthy's prescription for Bangalore's infrastructure collapse.

Mr Gowda had even wondered aloud whether major IT players were making demands for such vast pieces of land.

The Cabinet sub-committee will come up with recommendations to regulate the land development agencies such as the Bangalore Development Authority, the Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority, the Bangalore City Corporation and the seven City Municipal Councils, to ensure that land allotment is done according to law.

The sub-committee is also likely to examine whether the allotments made previously hold water, or whether norms were flouted and rules bent to accommodate the IT companies, sources added.