Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday announced that an Information Technology City would be developed in Rajgir on 100 acre land. Also, land has been earmarked for an IT Park at Bihta. The CM was speaking at the Bihar IT and ITeS Investors Conclave here.
Union Minister for Electronics & Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad asked the Indian Cellular Association to establish at least one mobile phone manufacturing factory in Bihar while 95 such companies have already been established in the country.
Nitish said the IT City in Rajgir would come up close to the under construction Nalanda University and nothing could be a better venue than this for developing an IT City. “IT sector apart from food processing and apparel industry are on our top priority. The popularity of the IT enabled services is increasing,” said the CM and asked the investors to explore option of opening their avenues in Bihar. His Government has already extended a number of facilities and the investors would not face any hardship, he added.
The CM said the investors could explore their avenues in Rajgir or Bihta where land would be available. Saying that there are good opportunities in this sector, he reminded the investors that a good number of Biharis are working across the world in IT sector.
Prasad said the IT revenue has increased from Rs 7 lakh crore to Rs 9 lakh crore of which Rs 7 lakh crore was from export. He also proposed to open a cyber security and digital forensic training centre in Patna for the digital policing. The CM appreciated the proposal and said that Government would not hesitate in allotting land for such a centre.
Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi announced that Government buildings would be allowed for installing mobile towers through auctions. So far the Government buildings were not allowed to install mobile towers resulting in the poor mobile signal in the VVIP areas. He also announced to open cyber security offices in each district and 309 Government Colleges would soon be provided free wi-fi service.
Industries Minister Jai Kumar Singh, US-India Strategic Partnership Forum president Mukesh Aghi, Indian Cellular Association president Pankaj Mohindroo, Cisco MD India Amit Malik, HP India country manager Amitabh Nag, KPMG India deputy CEO Akhil Bansal, former chairman CII eastern region Admiral AK Verma, general manager Microsoft India, Damodar Sahu of Wipro, lokesh Bhasin of TCS, Kunal Abhishek of Paytm, chairman of CII Bihar Council PK Sinha and Secretary of IT department Rahul Singh also spoke on the occasion.