Oommen Chandy questions smart city agreement

New Delhi, June 5 (UNI) Former Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy today questioned the Left Front Government's agreement with Dubai-based TECOM for the setting up of the "Smart City" project in Kochi, and charged the Achuthanandan Government with changing several clauses in the draft after it was approved by his own cabinet.

Demanding a judicial inquiry into the agreement, Mr Chandy who is the Leader of Opposition in the Kerala assembly, said " Let the agreement be examined by a team of experts of Information Technology, law and finance. Only then can the people of the state come to know how grossly certain clauses in the agreement were violated." He said the previous Congress-led UDF government headed by him had assured 33,300 direct jobs through the Smart city project. However, the LDF government, which had effected several changes in the originally proposed agreement, was non-committal on the assured job generation. The LDF government had only vaguely said " TECOM shall make best efforts to generate at least 90,000 jobs in ten years".

Likewise, when the final agreement was signed with TECOM last month, there were at least seven clauses which were in violation of the draft approved by the Achuthanandan cabinet.

" Why is it that the Chief Minister is silent on these changes made after the cabinet approved the agreement?", he asked.

Mr Chandy said the Left party, which once had pledged not not to give an inch of land of the Infopark in Kochi, had already given 22 acres to private companies. " This is certainly against the earlier stand they had taken", Mr Chandy said.

UNI