Smart City exits Kerala
By siliconindia   |   Wednesday, 17 June 2009, 00:05 IST   |    4 Comments
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Smart City exits Kerala
Bangalore: Smart city has exited Kerala. The Dubai based smart city was negotiating with Kerala government to set up self-sustained townships for information technology and knowledge-based industries near Kochi. Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan had laid the foundation stone of the Smart City project on November 16, 2007. The project was of worth Rs 1,500 crore (Rs 15 billion) and would have generated direct employment for 80,000 people and provide indirect employment to another 20,000 people. Experts feel, this project would have changed the face of the state but red tape and the lack of interest in the CPI-M leadership following internal bickering in the party leading to a standstill in administration and stagnancy in further proceedings has resulted in the Smart City calling it quits. Because of the lack of sufficient opportunities in Kerala, Majority of techies moved to Bangalore or elsewhere. The small companies of Trivandrum Technopark failed to attract techies in terms of Salary and access to global companies. Many of them hoped to comeback to Kerala once the Smart city become a reality. Smart City, Dubai had urged the state government on June 1 to sort out the issue of freehold land and wanted a commitment from the state government that at least 12 percent of the land would be given for free for the project. The Smart City CEO had said earlier that he was expecting a concrete reply from the Kerala government by the first week of June and added that till the state government and Smart City Dubai formally sorted out the issues, the master planners could not start the work proceedings. Smart City chief executive Fareed Abdul Rahman said that the company was getting to know about the officials' view through the media and there was no clarity on the freehold part. Achuthanandan has accused the Dubai-based developer of making "unreasonable demands". In a statement, the company said it has withdrawn the contract with U.K.-based master planner Collin Buchnan Company to develop the Smart City Kochi IT township project. "We regret to inform all those concerned that we have been forced to close our contract with the internationally renowned U.K.-based Master Planning Consultants," said Rahman. The proposed project, to be jointly launched by the state government and Smart City Dubai, is slated to come up on a 246-acre plot with 8.8 million square feet of built-up space, of which 70 percent is earmarked for IT and IT-enabled services. The government has already given the special economic status to 136 acres of the project land and is yet to get the same for the remaining land. But it has not completed the registration of the land and not settled the stamp duty issue.

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