Karnataka to buy land for IT investment region near Bangalore

The Karnataka government will initiate the process of acquiring about 2,072 acres of land to develop the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) near the Bangalore international airport, a senior official said Friday.

"We are soon going to issue the final notification to acquire the land required for the first phase of the region, as the central government had cleared the project in early June," state Industries Secretary M.N. Vidyashankar told IANS here.

The preliminary notification was issued in 2012 to acquire the lands at prevalent market rate from farmers and land owners after the central and state governments agreed in principle to set up the investment region, the first of its kind in the country, under the public-private partnership (PPP) at Devanahalli, about 40km from here.

"The IITR is projected to attract global investments worth Rs.2 lakh crore and create a million jobs over the next 10 years in knowledge-based industries, including software and hardware firms with entire supply chain," Vidyashankar said.

The region will also have a residential township, an airstrip, high-speed rail network, shopping plazas, hospitals, schools and recreational facilities for the communities living there.

"The knowledge park will be a self-sustainable integrated investment region for setting up software firms, back offices and a hardware park for electronics cluster, including chip designing and manufacturing units with world class infrastructure facilities," Vidyashankar said.

Indian IT bellwethers TCS, Infosys and Wipro have shown interest in setting up their software development centres in the region.

"Companies in the region will be entitled to tax and other incentives similar to those being provided under the SEZ (special economic zone) policy by the central government," Vidyashankar noted.

The state government has appointed international consultancy firm Deloitte to prepare an RFP (request for proposal) documents and terms and conditions for the global tender to select project developers, he said.

Noting that the ITIR project was a mega and prestigious project for Karnataka, state IT and BT Minister S.R. Patil said when the entire region is fully developed in two phases by 2020 and 2032, the new tech hub would create four million direct and indirect jobs in the knowledge sector.

"An additional 8,000 acres of land will be acquired after commencing the first phase project, which will be built in a modular way so that both the phases can be integrated seamlessly and become a new tech hub for the city," Patil said.

The Karnataka State Industrial Development Board (KIADB) has identified the additional land (5,090 acres), which is adjacent to the total land (5,400 acres) in first phase and falls under Doddaballapur across Devanahalli town.

Besides Karnataka, states like Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Orissa have proposed to set up ITIRs and had approached the central government for approval.