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| Vedic fire burns IT township project |
| Rajat Roy / Kolkata Sep 03, 2009, 00:10 IST |
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Decision will shortly be communicated to Infosys and Wipro who were earlier assured of land
As a direct fallout of the Vedic Village land scam, the state government has decided to scrap its proposed IT Township near it. According to one of the top officials of the department of Information and Technology, under whose aegis the township was proposed to be developed, though there has been no public communication to this effect as yet, the decision will shortly be communicated to Infosys and Wipro who were earlier assured of 300 acres of land each to set up their centres there.
Only yesterday, faced with allegations of entering into a bad deal which gave undue benefit to the promoters of Vedic Village Resorts Company, the Land and Land Reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah had demanded that the proposed IT Township should be scrapped with immediate effect. The IT minister Debesh Das was not available for his comment.
Incidentally, the same group of realtors who promoted the much controversial Vedic Village Resorts were given charge of procuring 1,200 acres of land near it for the proposed IT Township. The chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had already ordered an inquiry into the affairs of Vedic Village, which came under scanner after its close link with the land mafia came to the light following a death and a violent incident in which the villagers set fire on the Vedic Village. The state government has admitted that there has been prima facie evidence that musclemen had been engaged by the Vedic Village promoters to procure land at cheap rate from the poor farmers.
Last year, the IT department had formed a joint venture with the promoters of Vedic Village, by which they were entrusted to procure 1,200 acres of land from the farmers. The consortium of the promoters formed a company called Akash Nirman Private Limited and started buying land from the farmers. So far, they have procured around 500 acres of land. "But, not a single decimal of land has been transferred to the joint venture company. So, we can easily get out of the situation without much hassles," said a senior official of the IT department.
Also, he informed that Webel, the government's nodal agency for IT industry, has entered into a joint venture with the Akash Nirman Company, and the government will have to look into it to find out how best to dissolve that.
Without referring to minister Rezzak Mollah’s outburst yesterday, the official representing the IT department said, “Our role was limited to that of a marketing agent. A number of state government departments were involved in it to give it a full shape. Now, if anybody does not want to continue to take part in it then it becomes automatically difficult to pursue the project.”
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