Knowledge City on hold

Knowledge City on hold
BY R. JAYAPRAKASH
BENGALURU







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Bidadi Knowledge City, the biggest real estate project of the state conceived at a cost of Rs 23,000 crore may never take off as the BJP government wants to put the project, in which former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy is believed to have major stakes, on the backburner.

The BJP government, soon after coming to power put the brakes on some of the major projects cleared by the erstwhile JD(S) led coalition government and ordered the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) to freeze the projects and subject them to scrutiny. After Nikhil Gandhi’s Nandagudi SEZ project, DLF’s Bidadi Knowledge City becomes the second project to be put on ice.

A senior government official said the project may never be realised as the present government is not interested in sanctioning it. “The Chief Minister was supposed to review the project but for the past five months he has not shown any interest. On the other hand, Delhi-based DLF, the lead consortium which was to sign the concession agreement on the land and the compensation for the project was stopped. It’s more than a year since DLF bagged the project through competitive bidding but things have not moved an inch.

“While DLF has written dozens of letters to the government to finalise the concession agreement, the state’s response is it will get back as the project is under review,” the official said.

“The present government decided against the project, but not formally. Frustrated over the BJP government’s attitude, DLF is now pulling out of the project,” the official said.

But, when contacted, DLF denied they had called off their involvement. “This is absolutely baseless, we deny it,” DLF Corporate communication chief Sanjey Roy said in a written statement.