KTR blames Centre for stalling ITIR project

Rues that Union government had not responded to repeated appeals made by the State

Hyderabad: IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday rued that the Union government had not responded to the repeated appeals by the State government to establish the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) in Hyderabad.

“On behalf of the Government of Telangana, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and I 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,” the Minister said, in a letter to Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Thursday.

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Telangana, which became a new State in 2014, has on its own, made ample efforts to propel further growth in the IT sector. Rama Rao said the then Union government in 2008 had designed the new ITIR project to promote greater IT investments in the country. The project was initially sanctioned in 2010 for Hyderabad and Bangalore, and later, a few other cities were added. As per the requirement of the project guidelines, 49,000 acre of land in three clusters (both brownfield and greenfield) were identified in Hyderabad where new IT companies and IT space developers could be encouraged to set up their development centres.

The scheme, he said, had a provision for the Union government 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 3,275 crores were identified for the Hyderabad ITIR. The Centre 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 3,110 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, he said.

Regarding the first two projects approved in phase 1, the State and Union governments were engaged in correspondence with the Ministries of Railways and Road transport for sanctioning additional budgets to take up these two projects. However, none of the Union Ministries responded favourably to these proposals and the two projects remained non-starters, Rama Rao said.

 

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