Rama Rao Flags Injustice To State In Sanctioning New STPI

Industries and IT Minister KTR expressed anguish over the union Govt not sanctioning any new Software Technology Parks (STPIs) to Telangana.

In a letter to union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, he requested sanctioning new Software Technology Parks to Tier 2 and 3 towns of Nizamabad, Karimngar, Nalgonda, Khammam and Mahabubnagar in Telangana.

Union Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar on April 6, in reply to a question from Lok Sabha member Chandan Singh, had informed that the union Government had sanctioned 22 new STPIs for Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns in the country.

States like Jharkhand, UP, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Odisha, Bihar, Haryana, Gujarat, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh have figured in the list of upcoming STPIs. However, KTR pointed out that Telangana did not find a place in that list.

“I have personally met the then union IT and Electronics Minister Ravishankar Prasad with this request. CM KCR has met PM Modi also about this issue. Yet, nothing has happened till date.

Placing on record the tremendous growth of the IT Sector after the formation of Telangana State, Rama Rao said the IT Exports from Telangana have pegged at Rs 57,258 crore in the year 2014-15. They grew to Rs 1.45 lakh crore in the year 2021-22. The number of IT employees grew from 3.23 lakh then to 6.28 lakh now. Hyderabad has been clocking a healthy growth rate in commercial office space absorption too. It is consistently overtaking Bengaluru in this metric, he explained.

Progressive investment policies of Telangana have attracted several marquee companies to the State in the past 8 years. Telangana is the only State in the country to have sectoral IT policies such as Electronics Policy, Rural Tech Centers Policy, IMAGE Policy, Data Centers Policy and others.