DPR was not submitted for ITIR: Revanth

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 shelving 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 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.

To 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 diret employment to 15 lakh people and indirect employment to 55 lakh people, Mr. Reddy argued. Now KTR is raking up this issue to mislead youngsters in the MLC elections, he alleged.

Now graduates should question the government 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 crore and this would have attracted investments to the tune of ₹1.18 lakh crore from the IT and ITES sector and ₹1.01 lakh crore from Electronic and Hardware sector.

‘Illegal transfer’

Mr. Revanth Reddy alleged that lands given for setting up industries by the previous governments were now being sold to a group of people close to KTR at a throwaway price after changing the policy. He said previous Congress governments allotted lands for industries on the outskirts. 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 lands by people close to KTR and officials including Chief Secretary, Somesh Kumar were backing it.