The Phase I of the Smart City Kochi project, envisaged as the panacea for all ills of Kerala in the field of IT and IT-ES development, was inaugurated on Saturday amidst Opposition criticism that the ruling front, with its eyes riveted on the coming Assembly election, was betraying the people by commissioning a project that had not yet been completed.
Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and UAE's Cabinet Affairs Minister Mohammed Al Gergawi jointly inaugurated the project at the Smart City campus near Kakkanad off Kochi. The event also saw the laying of the foundation stone for the second phase of Smart City Kochi, the third such project promoted by Dubai Holding after those in Dubai and Malta.
"This is a moment of pride for Kerala," said Chandy after the inauguration. "Till now, our youth have been going to different parts of the world in search of employment. Now we are going to see the world coming to Kerala." Though the project was to go on stream some ten years ago, "It is now on the track," he said.
Smart City Kochi could lead Kerala to achievements in the fields of education and health, said Al Gergawi, who is also chairman of Dubai Holding. "With this project, Kerala will become the world's knowledge centre," he said thanking the State Government for enabling a Dubai-based company to implement such a project in God's Own Country.
Apart from Chandy and Al Gergawi, Union Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy, State IT Minister and Smart City Kochi chairman PK Kunhalikutty and vice-chairman Jaber Bin Hafez, Dubai Holdings vice-chairman Ahmad Bin Byat, industrialist MA Yusuffali, special invitee on the company's board, and others attended the inaugural function.
The Opposition boycotted the ceremony and held a protest meeting outside the venue. "We are not against Smart City. But Chandy and other corrupt leaders are betraying the people by inaugurating an incomplete project," said CPI(M)'s Ernakulam district chief P Rajeev. It is said that five more months will be needed for the total completion of Phase I of Smart City Kochi.
Before the inauguration, the Chief Minister claimed that he was fully satisfied with the project's progress. "There is no substance in the CPI(M)'s protest. What the Opposition lDF it leads could not do has been done by the UDF Government… This project should have become a reality a decade ago."
The first phase of the Smart City project consists over 600,000 square feet of fully developed built up area at a 246-acre campus at Edachira, Kakkanad, housing 27 IT and IT-ES companies and generating 5,000 direct employments. However, it is now reported that only 22 firms have been enrolled as tenants and seven of them have nothing to do with IT.
The project's second phase which stresses on IT development and the third phase envisaging infrastructure development with mobility hubs, healthcare facilities, hospitality centres and educational initiatives are to be completed within three years. The Government claims that the project, when it turns fully functional in 2020, will be able to provide 500,000 employments.
Smart City is one of the four big-ticket development projects which the UDF regime hopes can help it overcome the negative effects of the various scams in the Assembly poll. The other mega projects in the list are the Adani Group-promoted Vizhinjam international sea port, Kochi Metro Rail and the Kannur international airport.
The Smart City project was conceived as a Rs 1,500-crore IT and IT-ES project by the previous UDF Government headed by Chandy himself to provide 90,000 direct employments and a memorandum of understanding was signed between the State and Technology and Media Free Zone (Tecom), a member of the Dubai Holding Group, in September, 2005.
The agreement for the project was signed and the foundation stone was laid in November, 2007 during the reign of the lDF but it soon got trapped in controversies after allegations came up about the real estate interests of the Dubai-based promoter. The construction of the first phase of the project started in 2013.