Eight years on, SmartCity in Kochi is still a work in progress

Come November, and it will be the eighth anniversary of laying the foundation stone of the much-hyped >SmartCity Kochi project. And the project has till day managed only a yet-to-be-completed IT building of 6.50 lakh sq. ft. Even when completed it would just be the first building of the project generating about 5,500 jobs whereas Tecom, the Dubai-based promoters of the project, had promised 88 lakh sq. ft creating 90,000 jobs in 10 years at an investment of $350 million. That 10-year deadline is just two years away.

In fact, the project has missed countless deadlines in the last eight years. The initial roadblock was over freehold rights on 12 per cent land to the promoters.

The State government alleged that the promoters raised the demand as a delaying tactic to cover up their sorry financial state due to the global recession and the latter countered it by

>inviting the chief minister to Dubai to have a first hand account of their finances.

The project got a fresh lease of life when the issue of freehold rights was sorted out towards the fag end of the Left Democratic Front government.

The project again slipped into a slumber with the elections to the State Assembly. Soon after assuming power in 2011, Chief Minister Oommen Chandy announced that the first phase would be ready within two years.

Later, while inaugurating the SmartCity pavilion four months behind the initial deadline of 14 weeks in June 2012, Mr. Chandy set another 18-month deadline for the first phase.

That deadline also went by as the promoters demanded single SEZ status for the entire 246 acres to finalise the master plan and launch the construction work. When single SEZ notification came in January 2013, the Chief Minister put in place a renewed deadline of another two years to get the first phase completed.