By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : The Kerala government Wednesday appointed a high-level committee, headed by Chief Secretary P.J. Thomas, to look into the controversial Rs.40-billion ($1 billion) Cyber City project at Kochi, Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan said.
“The other members of the committee would include secretaries of the law, revenue, IT and registration. They have been asked to look into all aspects (of the land deal) and submit a report within a week,” the chief minister told reporters here.
This development comes two days after the Kerala government informed the Kerala High Court that it will not hesitate to cancel the proposed project if any foul play was detected in the transfer of 70 acres of government land to the project’s promoters, the Mumbai-based Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL).
The project is proposed to come up on 70 acres, which the HDIL says it acquired from public sector Hindustan Machine Tools Ltd (HMT) through a public auction.
Achuthanandan has washed his hands of the project and did not turn up for its foundation stone laying ceremony last week on the ground that despite he being the IT Minister, his department was kept in the dark about the project.
The project is a brainchild of state Industries Minister Elamaram Kareem, who is the blue-eyed boy of Achuthanandan’s archrival, Pinarayi Vijayan, state secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M).
The project has now become a major issue with the opposition Congress party demanding a judicial probe into how HMT sold the government land for the private Cyber City project, alleging the involvement of Kareem and state Revenue Minister K.P. Rajendran.
Achuthanandan has been drawing criticism from Vijayan, and is now trying to rake up this issue at the CPI-M’s state conference in Kottayam next month.
“The media has done a good job in bringing out this incident. But please don’t rock the boat by overdoing things. You should be careful while handling issues of usurping of government land. We will not be lenient on usurpers,” he said.