Srikrishna report: Retail, IT players in security 'net'

With the government set to make the Srikrishna Committee report public on January 6, commercial establishments in the city, especially organised retail and information technology companies sporting glass facades, are putting in place measures to ward off any untoward incident besides ensuring business continuity.

“We have already beefed up our security to protect windowpanes from stone-pelting, even as the state has deployed police forces and 50 companies of central troops. Earlier, it was a precautionary measure but now it has become a standard practice,” a senior official of Future Group’s Big Bazaar said, requesting anonymity.

In December 2009, over 20 shopping malls and small-scale business establishments, including one Big Bazaar outlet at Tarnaka, were damaged in stone pelting incidents by students of Osmania University as they took out rallies demanding separate Telangana statehood.

The GVK-One mall in the upmarket Banjara Hills has spent around Rs 15 lakh on a guarding net around the property. In fact, most of the malls in the city have their buildings covered with net.

“We are taking enough precautionary measures and have asked our people to work from closed doors. Besides, we have increased the number of our security personnel from the earlier four to eight. We still don’t know what the verdict will be tomorrow .. based on which we will further beef up our security,” said CK Shastri, managing director of enterprise agility software products company, Intense Technologies Limited.

Software development services company ADP Private Limited, which had moved its staff to a five star hotel on December 23, 2009, the same day when Union home minister P Chidambaram made his second statement calling for wider consultations on Telangana, however, is undeterred.

“We had interactions with the government and all the political leaders, who had assured us that no matter what their views are on the report, they will ensure the environment will be peaceful and conducive to all our industries to function properly. Initially, we planned (security measures) but now there is a lot of confidence based on what the government and senior political leaders assured us,” said Shakti Sagar, managing director of ADP and chairman, CII-Andhra Pradesh.

Pegasystems Worldwide is not relying on public transport for its staff and has instead arranged its own transport. “We are providing our own transport to most of our 250 employees - who use public transport – to pick them up and drop them back home in the evening. The state government has already deployed additional security in front of our campus, and so we are not increasing our internal security at the moment,” said Suman Reddy Eadunuri, vice president and managing director (India) of the California-based business process management services provider.

According to Hari Kumar, executive director of the IT and ITeS Industry Association of Andhra Pradesh (formerly Hyderabad Software Exporters Association - Hysea), there is already a consultative committee in place and all the chief executives of IT companies are connected to this network.

“As of today, we have not received any advisory concerning the law and order situation. All major IT companies have their own BCPs (business continuity plans). However, small companies, in case of violence or disruption of traffic, may get affected,” Kumar added.