Telangana Minister for Information Technology and Industry K Taraka Rama Rao on Thursday requested the Centre to reinstate the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project sanctioned in 2010 for Hyderabad.
In the letter, KTR said that the then union government in 2008 had designed a new project called Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project in order to promote greater IT investments in the country. He said that the project was initially sanctioned in 2010 for the two cities of Hyderabad and Bangaluru, and later on a few other cities were added. As per the requirement of the project guidelines, 49,000 acres of land in 3 clusters (both brownfield and greenfield) were identified in Hyderabad where new IT compes and IT space developers could be encouraged to set up their development centres, he added.
The minister further said, "The scheme had a provision for the Centre to pitch in with gap funding for the required trunk infrastructure from its existing schemes. Accordingly, a shelf of five projects with a total outlay of Rs 3275 crores was identified for the Hyderabad ITIR."
"The central government accorded its approval to the proposals submitted, and also agreed to support the infrastructure proposals in two phases, namely two projects in phase I with an outlay of Rs 165 crores and the remaining three projects in phase II with an outlay of Rs 3110 crores. The entire project was also given a definite timeline, with the expected date of completion of phase 1 projects by 2018 and expected date of completion of the remaining projects within 20 years thereafter," the minister said.
Regarding the first two projects approved in phase 1, the state government and central government were engaged in correspondence with the Ministries of Railways and Road transport for sanctioning additional budgets to take up these two projects, he said. However, none of the central ministries responded favourably to these proposals and the two projects remained non-starters, he stated.
Rao said both Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao and he had written several letters and submitted memorandums about ITIR project to the Union government during the past six years. However, there was no response whatsoever from the Union government on this important initiative
"Despite the global predicament due to the ongoing pandemic, the technology industry in Hyderabad has faced minimum disruption in conducting its activities," said KTR.
Minister KTR also stated that the government has facilitated the required assistance to all the compes and their employees towards a smooth and quick transition to Work From Home (WFH) and nevertheless, the IT industry too has been impacted due to the global economic slowdown, and the post-Covid economic recovery may easily take some years to materialise.
The Minister also reminded that projects such as ITIR also provide a huge boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives such as Make in India and also Atmrbhar Bharat. "The youth of Telangana will benefit immensely from the employment opportunities that will be created due to ITIR," said the Minister expressed hope that the central government will respond in the right earnest.
( With inputs from ANI )
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