Infovalley work stuck on water, electricity issues

The Infovalley project, planned on the city’s outskirts to lure IT investors, has hit a roadblock with negligible progress on external infrastructure like water and electricity.

“No work has been done on water and electricity and this has emerged as a major bottleneck for the Infovalley project. We will have another meeting soon where the issues will be placed at the chief minister's level,” said a top government official. The state IT minister Pratap Keshari Dev, on Monday, reviewed the status of the Infovalley project.

Around 600 acres of land have been identified for the prject. Out of that, about 500 acres has been acquired and the balance is expected to be acquired soon. The IT park will be developed jointly by Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) and IT major Infosys Technologies.

Infosys has been allotted about 45 acres of land and has started construction work for its second campus. The development of Infovalley assumes significance as it comes within the proposed IT investment region (ITIR) to be developed on an area of 40 sq km (around 10,000 acres) between Bhubaneswar and Khurda. The implementation of the proposed ITIR will involve a cost of Rs 17,883 crore.

Idco is also in the process of preparing the master plan for the project but the consultant is yet to be finalised. An SPV under the banner of Idco SEZ Development Ltd has been formed to implement the project.

The project has already got the clearance from the Union ministry of environment & forests (MoEF). As a part of the project, an integrated township spread over 18 acres will be developed on the public private partnership (PPP) mode.