KTR alleges gross injustice to Telangana in allocation of STPIs

Hyderabad: IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Saturday urged the Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnav to sanction STPIs for tier two towns in Telangana like Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Nalgonda, Khammam and Mahbubnagar.

In a letter written to Union Minister, Rama Rao alleged that severe injustice was done to Telangana by not allocating a single STPI in the tier two cities of Telangana out of the 22 allocated in the entire country. Rao said, in a reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar informed the House that the Centre sanctioned 22 new STPIs for tier 2 and tier 3 towns in the country. Unfortunately, none of the towns from Telangana featured in that list. While States like Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh are on the list of the upcoming STPIs, Telangana doesn't feature on that list, said Rama Rao.

The IT Minister talked about the growth of the IT sector after the formation of Telangana State. "While the IT exports from Telangana were pegged at Rs 57,258 crore in 2014-15, they grew to a whopping Rs 1,45,522 crore in 2021-22. The number of IT employees grew from 3,23,396 to 6,28,615. Hyderabad has been clocking a healthy growth rate in commercial office space absorption too and is consistently overtaking Bengaluru in this metric," said the Minister.

The Minister further said that Telangana is the only State in the country to have sectoral IT policies such as Electronics Policy, Rural Tech Centres Policy, IMAGE Policy, Data Centres Policy etc. The State also has the most comprehensive innovation ecosystem with institutions like T-Hub, We-Hub, TSIC, RICH and TASK.

Rao said that to generate more employment opportunities in other towns of the state, the State government was taking several measures to develop Tier-2 and Tier- 3 towns as IT powerhouses and facilitate the growth of a complete ecosystem like Hyderabad in these locations. Towns like Khammam, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Warangal, etc. have already been established as IT-hubs. The government built plug and play infrastructure in these towns. Telangana government has also started construction of IT hubs in other tier 2 and tier 3 towns like Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar and Siddipet etc.

Rao said that the Centre seems to have ignored a performing State like Telangana in sanctioning new STPIs. "I am sure you will agree with the fact that development of the States amounts to the development of the country.

I hereby urge you to use your good offices to sanction new software technology parks to tier 2 and 3 towns of Telangana," said Rao adding this would provide the much needed fillip to the IT sector in the State and also lead to generation of abundant employment opportunities to youngsters of Telangana.