Days after scrapping the proposed IT township project at Rajarhat, the West Bengal government today said it had suggested alternative land to Infosys and Wipro, a proposal rejected by the IT majors.
At a meeting of the ruling Left Front here, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee informed that Housing Minister Gautam Deb had offered alternative 10 acre each to the two IT firms at New Town, Rajarhat, but they spurned the proposal, an LF leader said.
The two companies said they needed more land to set up their shop and the government was trying to accommodate them, Bhattacharjee told the meeting.
“The government wants to see that the two companies did business in the state,” the chief minister was quoted as having told the meeting.
Earlier in the day, LF chairman Biman Bose told reporters that the state government had not rejected the proposals of Wipro and Infosys for setting up units near the metropolis.
Bhattacharjee told the meeting that the government had only scrapped the IT park which was to come up near the controversial Vedic Village resort, Bose said.
In April 2008, the state government had inked two MoUs— one each with Infosys and Wipro—for setting up IT facilities, for which they had sought 90 acre each. While for Infosys it would had been the first project, Wipro was planning a second one. A company had been floated for setting up an IT park near Vedic Village which now stood scrapped.
IT industry body Nasscom had yesterday suggested that the government could offer land from the Rajarhat township in neighbouring North 24 Parganas reducing focus on real estate. “Government has enough land. It has land in Rajarhat township, but it is meant for real estate. Government has to choose whether it wants employment by offering land to IT companies or just make buildings,” Nasscom Eastern Regional Council Chairman V V R Babu had told reporters. IT companies required large space for training and for infrastructural facilities, Nasscom president Som Mittal had said. Reacting to the LF chairman’s statement, the state unit of Congress said, “Biman Bose is the head of the Left Front and state CPI(M) and not the government. We want a statement publicly from the chief minister without further delay.” “Congress is not bothered what Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee tells the Left Front and his party,” WBPCC vice-president Manas Bhuniya told reporters here. Bhuniya claimed Minister for Housing Gautam Deb, Minister for Information Technology Debesh Das and Land and Land Reforms Minister Rezzak Mollah were “issuing contradictory statements, responsible for the chaos in the IT sector”. The Congress, he said, wanted that the state government ensure that these two companies stayed on in West Bengal in the interest of future generations. Meanwhile, the West Bengal Youth Congress today began a mass signature campaign demanding CBI enquiry into the Vedic Village episode and to press for keeping Infosys and Wipro here. “We are aiming to collect one crore signatures from across the state and submit it to Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi,” WBYC president Amitava Chakraborty said.
