Kolkata, March 30 (IANS) In an apparent move to break the deadlock over its stalled project in West Bengal, IT major Infosys is sending a delegation to West Bengal to find a way to resolve the issue, Industry Minister Partha Chatterjee said Saturday.
The proposed project of the IT bellwether firm at Rajarhat in the eastern fringes of the city has failed to take off as the Mamata Banerjee government has been refusing to grant it special economic zone (SEZ) status or attribute a similar status to it.
“A delegation from Infosys will come here. We will then find out the way to resolve the issue,” Chatterjee said on the sidelines of the annual regional meeting of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here.
The Bangalore-headquartered IT major, however, did not specify that when it would send its delegation to the state.
“I have already talked to (Infosys co-chairman S.) Gopalakrishnan. We want that the company starts operations here. The West Bengal government will fully cooperate with it,” Chatterjee said.
The minister said his government would assist the firm in all possible ways but it could not give a SEZ status to the Rajarhat project as it had promised to the people that it was not going to give such status to any project in the state.
Infosys has been demanding the SEZ status for its project, to be developed on a 50-acre land, over the last three years.
The company, however, maintained that it would continue to have “discussions” with the state government on solving the impasse.
“I will come back and discuss it with the minister (Chatterjee) to take a decision on taking it (the project) forward,” said Gopalakrishnan, who was also present at the CII event.
Asked when he would hold talks with the minister, he said: “I don’t have any timeframe.”
