Parliament member and Telangana Congress working president, A. Revanth Reddy has blamed the TRS government for not providing the Detailed Project Report (DPR) despite the Central government asking for it ultimately leading to the shelving of the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project.
He said the Central government had informed the Lok Sabha about shelving the project on a question raised by the TRS MP Kotha Prabhakar Reddy in 2018 itself stating that the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has not received any representation from the Telangana government on the project.
In another question by Mr. Prabhakar Reddy on July 3, 2019, in the Lok Sabha, the Minister for Electronics and Information Technology clearly informed that the Telangana government was asked to submit requisite information to ministries concerned but there was no response. “This clearly shows that the project was shelved as the Telangana government failed to submit the required information,” he said at a press conference here.
The Telangana government and the IT Minister, K.T. Rama Rao should take the blame for shelving the project that was given by the Congress government to create direct employment to 15 lakh people and indirect employment to 55 lakh people, Mr. Reddy argued. Now Mr. KTR is raking up this issue to mislead youngsters in the MLC elections and trying to divert the attention and cover up his failures, he alleged.
Now graduates should question the government as to why the government failed to provide the DPR for the project that had the potential to turn Hyderabad into another Silicon Valley, Mr Reddy claimed. As per the ITIR policy the Telangana government had to create infrastructure spending ₹13,000 crores and this would have attracted investments to the tune of ₹1.18 lakh crores from the IT and ITES sector and ₹1.01 lakh crore from Electronic and Hardware sector.
Illegal transfer of lands
Mr. Revanth Reddy also alleged that costly lands given for setting up industries by the previous governments are now being sold to a group of people close to IT Minister, K.T. Rama Rao at a throwaway price after changing the policy. He said previous Congress governments allotted lands for industries on the outskirts.
With the city expanding those industries have become part of the city and in 2108 government had allowed them to change the land status to use them for non-polluting industries like the IT sector. This facility is now being used to acquire those costly lands from the owners by people close Mr. KTR and officials including the Chief Secretary, Somesh Kumar were backing it. All these lands are now converted into residential lands, he claimed.
