Union Minister 'misled' House on ITIR, flays KTR

Adarsh Nagar (Hyderabad): "The statement given by Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Sanjay Dhotre on Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR), Hyderabad, in the Lok Sabha on February 10 is factually incorrect," stated Minister KT Rama Rao. The Union Minister was responding to a question on ITIR posed by Bandi Sanjay Kumar, MP.

KTR said that in spite of submitting all necessary information, DPR and also several reminders in the last six years, the Union Minister chose to mislead the House by stating: "The Government of Telangana was asked to submit the required information to the concerned ministries with intimation to MeitY. No information was furnished by the Government of Telangana."

Minister KTR said that it was very unfair on the part of the NDA government and the Telangana BJP leaders to blame the TRS government despite repeated requests to the Centre. The first such letter was written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by CM KCR as soon as Telangana was formed in June 2014.

Another detailed memorandum was submitted on the ITIR project to the Centre by KTR in September 2014. In 2016, KTR met the then Union minister of State Bandaru Dattatreya to present a DPR of ITIR, as a response to the latter's comments that the Telangana government did not submit a project report for ITIR.

Though the Telangana Government presented a report on ITIR twice, Dattatreya commented that "we did not submit DPR. Probably he might have been misguided by officials. To put things straight and make facts clear, I have personally met him, informed him, and presented DPR of ITIR once again" KTR told the media after meeting Dattatreya in June 2016.

Several reminders about ITIR Project were submitted to Prime Minister Modi and Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad over the last six years. Yet the NDA government chose to ignore these requests. The intention to discontinue the ITIR Project can be very clearly understood from the non-committal responses of NDA government.

In January 2021 also, KTR wrote to Ravi Shankar Prasad requesting funds for the ITIR project. Yet, the government did not allocate a single rupee in the budget. While the facts are thus, it is unfortunate that the Union minister chose to issue a factually incorrect statement. "It is also irresponsible on the part of State BJP leaders to resort to a smear campaign on the Telangana government without ascertaining the facts," KTR remarked.