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Date: October 06, 2021

Holy city Amritsar inches closer to becoming IT hub

Holy city Amritsar inches closer to becoming IT hub

Software Technology Park to resume operations from November onwards

Long-pending dream to see holy city as North India’s IT hub is inching closer to fruition as the Software Technology Park of India (STPI) will initiate steps to operationalise the Software Technology Park Centre here from November.

The Hindustan Steel Work Construction Ltd (HSWCL), a subsidiary of the national building construction company, which falls under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, will hand over the building to the STPI on October 31.

Salient features

*  As the state government allotted, 2.72 acres to the New Focal Point on the Mehta Road, the STPI invested Rs22.5 crore to raise a structure, which would also house a centre as well as incubation facility. There is around 3,900 square metre built-up area with three storeys, including a ground floor at the centre. At the entrance, one will find a cafeteria, a training room, a conference room, besides an NOC room (a server will be installed in it). On the first floor, there are three meeting rooms, a pantry and the next floor will have a similar set up.

Project timeline

*  The then Cabinet minister Kapil Sibal had allocated an STP Centre to the holy city in 2012. Next year, an allotment committee under the chairmanship of the then Chief Secretary had approved the allotment of a piece of land to be set up an STP.
*  The then Union minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Parsad, had laid the foundation stone of the STP here on November 7, 2016.

Rohit Kumar, a Senior Engineer of the HSWCL, says: interior work of the centre is on its last leg which would be completed before the handing over of the building. The HSWCL constructs STP centres on the behalf of Software Technology Parks of India (STPI), an autonomous society under the Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Accepting that there was some delay due to Covid-19 restrictions and lockdown, he added that the HSWCL, which constructs STP centres on behalf of the STP of India, was entrusted with the project only in 2018.

As the state government allotted, 2.72 acres of land in the New Focal Point on the Mehta road, the STPI invested Rs 22.5 crore to raise a structure which would also house a centre as well as the incubation facility. There is around 3,900 square metre built-up area with three storeys, including a ground floor at the centre. At the entrance, one will find a cafeteria, a training room, a conference room, besides an NOC room (a server will be installed in it). On the first floor, there are three meeting rooms, a pantry and the next floor will have a similar set up.

Sources in the STPI stated that the spaces in the building would be rented out to private IT companies. Provisions for both small and big companies have been made.

IT experts are of the view that the holy city equipped with international connectivity and quality infrastructure was best suited to be developed as an IT hub. It has an international airport with flights to Europe, Middle East, South East Asia. An international bus terminal offering bus services between India and Pakistan. Besides, it is by road connected to the Central Asian countries like Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. Notably, these countries are dependent on foreign countries for most of their IT needs, he said.

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