Press Trust of India Posted online: Friday, October 21, 2005 at 2206 hours IST
Bangalore, October 21: In the continuing spat between him and the IT industry, software major Infosys on Friday hit back at former Prime Minister and JDS supremo H.D. Devegowda on land allotment to it and other issues raised by him, attacking the IT firms.
Countering Gowda point-by-point, Infosys presented what it called data on land allotted to it, its utilisation by the company, investment made by it and the employment generated by the Bangalore-based Nasdaq-listed firm.
The rejoinder comes a day after Infosys chairman and chief mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy resigned from the chairmanship of the Bangalore International Airport Limited, expressing anguish over Gowda’s remarks questioning the contribution of Murthy in the progress of BIAL and Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh not coming to his defence.
Gowda, in a letter to Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh last week, had said some IT companies, including Infosys, had already taken substantial land in the name of IT development and sought to know the employment generated by the firms.
Infosys, in a statement, gave details of the Infosys Development Centres in Karnataka (Bangalore, Mysore and Mangalore) in terms of investment, total area, built-up area, revenues and seats.
Infosys said it’s total investment in Karnataka amounts to Rs 1,744 crore. Out of the total of 46,000 employees, 22,000 jobs have been created in Karnataka alone. Infosys software exports from Karnataka amount to 14 per cent of the total IT exports of Karnataka.
Infosys also said IT has generated employment for over 2,500 workers (housekeeping, landscaping and others) from around the campuses in Karnataka and that many more jobs have been created through support industries.
Referring to Gowda’s letter, which said that IT companies such as Wipro, Intel, Accenture, IBM, HP, Honeywell have not been given any land, but are functioning mostly in rented buildings, Infosys said in electronics city alone, two of these companies listed have large campuses. Another company has a large campus on the outer ring road.
Rented premises, built by real estate developers, also require land and workspace, Infosys said. The company then sarcastically asked, “surely, our leaders do not recommend that we go to the real estate developers only and not build campuses ourselves”.
In his letter to the Chief Minister last week, Gowda had also asked him to be cautious while taking a final decision on the request by Infosys for allotment of 845 acres of land for developing a new software development centre and township.
Infosys said it had requested the Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board to acquire the land after securing zoning requirements from the government and complying with the law. The land was being acquired on a consent basis and after paying the market price to the land owners.
“No special concession have been sought from the government,” it said.
