By IANS
Chandigarh : Punjab, Haryana and the union territory of Chandigarh have decided to jointly market the region for making it a knowledge and information technology hub.
This was announced Tuesday by officials of both the states and the union territory ahead of the 'E-revolution' conference that will be jointly organised by them here Aug 2 and 3.
Punjab's Information and Technology (IT) Minister Adesh Pratap Singh Kairon said both the states and Chandigarh would devise a strategy to attract investment in the IT and software sectors.
"We don't want to compete among ourselves. The effort will be to attract investment for this region," Kairon said.
Software exports from the region are only a fraction of the country's booming software export business.
While Chandigarh has set up an IT Park – the Rajiv Gandhi Chandigarh Technology Park (RGCTP) – and attracted big names like Infosys, Wipro, DLF and others for investing here, Punjab and Haryana are marketing the adjoining cities of Mohali and Panchkula for new IT parks.
Haryana's IT director V.S. Kundu said that Panchkula will now be marketed as a big IT destination to make it comparable to Gurgaon. He said that hotmail.com founder Sabeer Bhatia was already setting up a high tech development area called 'nano city' near Panchkula.
Punjab's IT director Rakesh K. Verma said that many IT players had shown interest in investing in the state. The state already has units of Quark, Dell, Infosys and other IT and software companies.
Chandigarh's IT director Manjit Singh Brar said that after the allotment of sites in phase I and II of the RGCTP, 270 acres of land would be made available for IT companies in phase III of the IT park.