K'taka Dy CM promises all help to IT sector

The Karnataka government has promised the IT industry that it was committed to the development of the IT sector in the state and will make all efforts to meet infrastructure requirements. It will hold a second round of meeting with IT chiefs shortly to discuss their problems.

In the background of the promise, it has appealed to the IT captains not to think of moving out of Karnataka to neighbouring states like Tamil Nadu or Andhra Pradesh.

Deputy chief minister Siddaramaiah said in Mysore on Saturday, "The Karnataka government is for IT. It will extend all facilities to them."

Referring to the reports over emigration of IT players from Karnataka, he reminded the delegates of the two-day all India workshop on promotion and communication technology for the masses that it was the Janata Dal government of chief minister J H Patel which had initiated the IT policy in 1996-97.

He was then the finance minister and then Prime Minister A B Vajpayee had opened the IT park in Bangalore.

Since then the IT sector has grown by leaps and bounds and today Karnataka has become a global name in IT sector. But the four to 12 per cent tax hike on hardware in the last budget has spurred a debate over the future of the IT industry in the state.

When the IT chiefs met him soon after expressing their opposition to the hike, he had told them that it was only a temporary eight-month levy as VAT would become the uniform tax policy throughout the country with only two tax slabs of 4 and 12 per cent, and hence, he had appealed to them to bear the burden till then.

"However, I know they are not happy with my assurance," Siddaramaiah said.

Allaying apprehensions that the present government was opposed to IT, he said that as only 25 per cent of the state's revenue was made available for development. This affected infrastructure development in Bangalore, as elsewhere.

Therefore, in the recent meeting of state finance ministers in New Delhi, he had urged Union finance minister P Chidambaram to hand over the service tax sector to the states. But, this required a constitutional amendment and hence could be discussed again, Chidamabaram had said.

Clicking on tele-medicine link between the local Vikram Hospital and Mandya tele-centre, before inaugurating the workshop, the finance minister gave an online assurance to Mandya and Nagamangala legislators that the Karnataka government welcomed such vital pro-people IT programmes. It would earnestly consider extending it to other places.