Orissa to have another IT city soon

Bhubaneswar, Mar 2 (UNI) Orissa governemnt is seriously contemplating having another Information Technology city with some major IT majors showing interest to set up their facilities in the state.

State Information Technology Minister S N Patra told newsmen here that the government had already identified a patch of land spread over 250 acres near Khurda on the outskirt of the capital city to develop the new IT centre.

This would be the second IT city after the Info City, which the government had established during year 2000 to attract the IT industry to set up their development centres.

Major IT companies like the Infosys, Satyam, TCS, Wipro and Mindtree had already acquired the land in the infocity and started their development centres.

Mr Patra said that at present there is no land available in the Info City to accommodate any other big IT companies. The state government had reserved space spread over 50 acres of land inside the Info City to be developed into a special IT hub under public-private partnership, he added.

The government had already sought expression of interest from the companies to develop the centre which would house several BPOs and other IT firms.

He said the IT department had requested Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik to provide another 1000 acres of land on the periphery of the capital city to develop another Info City to which the Chief Minister had agreed.

The Minister said the department had identified three sites near Khurda to be developed into an IT city. In the first stage, a place near Janala had been identified and the state undertaking Industrial Development Corporation(IDCO) had been asked to acquire nearly 250 acres of land for the purpose.

Mr Patra said once land was acquired for the purpose, the government would invite the interested companies to set up their centres in the new IT city.

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