Kerala CM Achuthanandan, LDF govt pursues Smart City project

Once a bitter opponent of the Smart City project, the LDF Government is now determined to implement it on its own terms and has got the Dubai-based backers to agree to most of its conditions.

Kerala

It is a project that the Left Democratic Front (LDF), when in the Opposition in 2003, had termed "the biggest real estate racket in the state". V.S. Achuthanandan, then the leader of the Opposition, had even threatened that if and when the LDF came to power, he would "put all the backers of the project behind bars".

Now the chief minister of Kerala, Achuthanandan and his party have come a long way since then. The ruling CPI(M), once the most bitter opponent of the Rs 2,200-crore Smart City project, is now pursuing it with a zeal that would make any hard-nosed businessman green with envy. Although uncertainty marks the project in Kochi proposed by Dubai's Technology and Media Free Zone Authority (TECOM) even after two-anda-half years, the LDF Government now appears determined to implement it-on its own terms. It has managed to get TECOM, who are also promoters of the high-tech 246-acre Dubai Internet City, to accept most of its conditions.

Achuthanandan has suddenly turned investment-friendly

But there's still one hitch: TECOM wants ownership of the land at the end of the 25-year lease period while the Government wants the land for itself. Before returning to Dubai last week, TECOM representatives said, "We have accepted all the other conditions of the Government. But if the ownership of land is not with the company, it would be difficult to attract top international majors to invest in the project." They added that the Government should take a decision within a month.

For the LDF Government, the Smart City project is an absolute necessity in order to shed its image of being anti-investment. While leading the Opposition, Achuthanandan had specifically objected to three clauses that the then Congress-led government had included in the MOU: the government's offer to charge only a nominal price of Re 1 per acre for 100 acres being handed over to the project; handing over the Rs 100-crore Infopark (an existing infrastructure facility in the heart of the land proposed to TECOM) and the marginal share of 9 per cent for the state government in the new Smart City company.

Disregarding all opposition, the UDF-led government was on the verge of signing the deal when polls were announced

But the new party which took over power sprang a surprise by announcing that they would go ahead with the Smart City project. "We are not going to implement the project under UDF's conditions but on our own," said Achuthanandan. He insists that the project is a golden jubilee gift for Kerala, which celebrates the 50th year of its formation this year.

What raised the chief minister's stock further was his success in making TECOM accept a new set of conditions which excluded all those the LDF had opposed in the MOU prepared by the UDF. The price of land has been raised, Infopark is not being handed over, and the government's share would be 16 per cent, to be raised to 26 per cent after five years.

The only spanner in the works is the land ownership clause. The CPI(M) will discuss this issue soon, although its coalition partner, the CPI, sees nothing wrong in accepting TECOM's demand. "The land is not being handed over to a private player but to a company in which the state government has a 26 per cent stake. Why worry?" asks K.E. Ismail, assistant secretary, CPI.

Expectedly, the LDF Government's near-success has left the UDF and former chief minister Oommen Chandy, the initiator of the project, red faced. However, they are putting up a brave front and are accusing the LDF of hypocrisy. "While in the Opposition, they opposed it tooth and nail. Now they are in the Government and are wooing Smart City. They don't want any other player so that they can bring in investors and grab all the credit," says Chandy.

He also points out LDF's decision to avail Asian Development Bank's Rs 1,400-crore loan, which they had opposed while in the Opposition and which they are rooting for now. But the LDF retorts that they opposed it on the grounds that it was against the interests of the state. "In the cover of Smart City, the UDF was trying to help sell the state's precious resources for a song," says state Finance Minister Thomas Isaac.
 
What has made TECOM return to the state in spite of changed governments and conditions is also worth noting. "The main reason is that Kochi is less crowded and cheaper than Bangalore, Hyderabad or Chennai, the most favoured IT destinations," an IT mission official said. "Kochi can afford cost-effective bandwidth since it has a 15 GBPS international communication gateway; it is the only landing point in the country for three international submarine optic fibre cable systems."

NASSCOM ranks Kochi as India's number two destination for IT and ITES industry. No wonder the state Government made TECOM see reason and forced it to step down. The Government says it has 12 offers from top global companies to set up parks similar to Smart City. "We want TECOM to set up the project. But if they insist on difficult conditions, we'll have no option but go for other offers," said a top government official.

It's time investment takes off in industry-starved Kerala which earns just about Rs 500 crore annually from IT exports, a speck compared to the huge windfall made by its neighbours. Maybe the Smart City project will morph into the biggest real estate "package" in the state.

https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/states/story/20070319-tecom-project-still-facing-hurdles-748931-2007-03-19

Kapil Sibal. The rebel who quitThe lawyer-politician, who left the Congress, says he is looking at the future

Sandeep Phukan

ILLUSTRATION: SREEJITH R KUMAR

Among the most outspoken lawyer-politicians, Kapil Sibal parted with the Congress after nearly a three-decade-long relationship in a rather mellow affair. He refused to get drawn into any debate about the party leadership under the Gandhis, though questions are being asked if his rebellion was all about getting a Rajya Sabha berth.

“I am not a Congressman any more and won’t speak about the party. I want to move forward and look towards the future,” Mr. Sibal, 73, told The Hindu, hours after filing his nomination as an Independent candidate, backed by the Samajwadi Party (SP), for the Rajya Sabha election.

His move forward in politics, however, seems to follow a familiar path. In 1998, he first entered the Rajya Sabha from Bihar with help from Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, then headed by Sitaram Kesri. This was his second attempt at politics; his first brush was in 1996 when he lost the Lok Sabha election to the late Sushma Swaraj of the BJP in the South Delhi constituency. “A defeat in court does not hurt as much because a lot depends on the merits of the case, but when I lost from South Delhi, I told myself that I must somehow avenge by living to fight elections another day,” Mr. Sibal wrote in his book Shades of Truth: A Journey Derailed.

This ability to put up a “spirited” fight brought him fame and controversies in equal measure.

Whether it was his “zero loss” theory to explain allocation of 2G spectrum during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government or bringing in the now struck-down Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act to censor social media platforms, Mr. Sibal threw himself open to sharp attacks from rivals.

He was born in 1948 at Jalandhar, as the youngest of the four sons of Kailash Rani and Hira Lal Sibal, a distinguished lawyer who had famously defended the renowned writer Sadaat Hasan Manto in a Lahore court against charges of “obscenity” in his writings. While studying history at St. Stephen’s College, the Sibal junior was well-known for his theatrical skills as a member of the Shakespeare Society. During this time, he met Nina Singh, a Miranda House college student, who went on to become his first wife. The story goes that he took and cleared the civil services exam in 1973 to join Nina, who had cleared the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) a year earlier. But when he got the IAS instead of the IFS, he dropped out.

Big moment

After getting married that year, he followed her to the U.S., where she was posted as a young diplomat, to pursue his Master’s in Law from the prestigious Harvard Law School. After returning to India, Mr. Sibal earned a reputation for himself by taking up high-profile cases in the 1980s and became Additional Solicitor-General in December 1989. But his big moment came in 1993 when he defended Justice V. Ramaswami, the first Supreme Court judge to face an impeachment motion in Parliament. A lawyer whose client list included the who’s who of Indian politics, Mr. Sibal defended Mr. Prasad in the 1997 fodder scam and ensured a Rajya Sabha berth a year later.

In 1998, when Sonia Gandhi took over as the Congress president, he became a party spokesperson. Two years later, he not only spoke out against the party leadership but also backed Jitendra Prasada, who had unsuccessfully contested against Ms. Gandhi for the post of party president. This was also the year when Mr. Sibal lost Nina to cancer. He married entrepreneur Promila five years later..

‘Trouble shooter’

In 2004, after winning Delhi’s Chandni Chowk seat, Mr. Sibal was made the Minister for Science and Technology by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Portfolios as diverse as Human Resource Development, Telecommunications & IT and Law & Justice became part of his growing responsibilities, and he was known as a “trouble shooter” within the party.

However, as the Congress’s electoral fortunes continued to slide, Mr. Sibal joined the party’s ginger group (referred to as G-23) in August 2020 to press for “a visible and collective leadership”. Last September, he crossed a red line with his comments that “in our party, at the moment, we have no president ” and “we are G-23, but definitely not Ji Huzoor [yes-men] 23”.

And now, he’s no longer with the party.

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