Government in fix over land allotment to IT biggies

INDORE: Dream of state to become IT hub set to face yet another obstacle, after positive response of Infosys about setting up their centre in the city, TCS has expressed their reservation over allotting adjoining plot to their competitor Infosys at super corridor. State government is likely to take decision over land allotment to IT giants in a cabinet meeting scheduled for Tuesday.The rate of the land will also discuss in the meeting.
TCS is already miffed at delay in allotting land to them, as per the instruction of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan they were supposed to allot the land by July this year. But even after five months of laps of the deadline TCS is still for the land.
Laxminkant Agrawal, CEO's Office, Tata Consultancy Service (TCS), who is instrumental in bring the IT giant to city and convincing to invest them around Rs 1000 crore in the city, informed TOI that company is not happy with the move of Indore Development Authourity (IDA) to allot the adjoining land to Infosys at super corridor. "We are not happy to have our competitor next door. We are not against any other IT company in our neighbourhood," said Agrawal. But it is not clear whether TCS has communicated their reservation about land allotment to state government or not.
However, IDA CEO, Chandramouli Shukla said that they have around 2000 acre of land in possession at super corridor and near by areas. If TCS did not like the land, which has been acquired for them then we have more choice to put on platter. We will ensure that project should not get affected due to land. But till now we have not received any officials communication in this regard from TCS.
Company officials draw the attention towards that fact that they had given the consent for the land a month back, but still they are waiting for reply from the government side on the matter. "We have still not received any official letter regarding land allotment," he said adding that as soon we get the land allotment we will first completed the legal formalities and thereafter we will approach centre government for SEZ status. We are rush as the process is need to be completed before March 31, after that we will not get the benefits of SEZ.
About Indore project he said that work on the project will start only after getting clearance for SEZ from union government. It is to be noted that on June 17 chief minister has holds a high level meeting where right from chief secretary to many principal secretary of several ministry and top officials of Indore were present. It was decided in the meeting at any cost state government will hand over the land to TCS by July end and CM will perform bhoomi pujan in August. Meanwhile, due to delay over allotting land TCS had step back over the project and had convey the state government that they are reviewing the project. However, they were agreed to set up their centre in Indore after meeting with chief minister in Mumbai last month.