Hyderabad: The Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project for Hyderabad, costing Rs 13,000 crore, approved by the previous UPA government, has been stalled for all practical purposes.
“The state government has not yet been informed about the details of the revised scheme by the Centre. The Central government doesn’t want to continue ITIR in its current form. They are yet to prepare the revised version and submit it to the state,” IT secretary Jayesh Ranjan said.
The previous Congress government, after almost three years of research, prepared the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for ITIR. It already identified 50,000 acres of land in five zones in and around Hyderabad.
“The government is going ahead with small things like incubation centres, ignoring such mammoth projects, which would have augmented Hyderabad. This project met all the requisites and had its base in 2013 itself. This largest conceived project in the IT sector would have generated 71.5 lakh employment opportunities in 20 years. However, even after four years, nothing has moved,” Congress leader Ponnala Lakshmaiah, former IT minister said.
The ITIR project was designed to attract global investments worth Rs 2.23 lakh crore with 15.4 lakh direct jobs and around 54 lakh indirect jobs.
Meanwhile, the government is gearing up with a new IT park at Budwel.
“The government is doing the plan which would have been done by the ITIR. The government initiated works for an electronic cluster near Shamshabad and Maheshwaram. The allotment of 350 acres of land to IT companies has been completed at Budwel,” the IT secretary said.
Once Budwel IT Park reaches a level, the government will be working on setting up a park in Tellapur. However, Ponnala said that the revision from Central government is an alibi. “The government has neither concern nor commitment to develop the parks. No project with the same potential of ITIR has been proposed or conceived by the government in the past four years,” Ponnala Lakshmaiah said.
