TMCnet News
SemIndia closes the door on K'taka's pitch(Times of India, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Feb. 13--HYDERABAD, India -- Karnataka's decision to try to re-negotiate with SemIndia and convince the company to set up its silicon chip fabrication project in that state was put to rest on Sunday when SemIndia officials categorically stated that there was no going back on the decision to locate the $ 3 billion project in Hyderabad. "We have made a decision and the matter ends there," SemIndia president and CEO Vinod K Agarwal told TOI on the telephone. Asked whether any official from the Karnataka government had got in touch with the promoters of the project, Agarwal said: "I do not want to go into all that. We (SemIndia officials) have made a decision. It was made after carefully considering various factors." AP government officials too had made it clear that Fab City is a closed chapter. A day after chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Agarwal announced that Hyderabad is to be the location of the project, Karnataka chief minister H D Kumaraswamy had said he would talk to SemIndia officials and convince them to locate it in Karnataka. While stating that Fab City is a done deal, AP government officials said it was not just Hyderabad's climate, good roads, assured supply of water and electricity and proximity to the international airport that worked in its favour, but AP's political stability too was a key factor. Clearly implying that the recent political developments which led to the fall of the Congress-JD (S) coalition headed by Dharam Singh and the subsequent succession of a rebel JD(S) group led by Kumaraswamy in alliance with the BJP went against the state. On Saturday, chief minister Rajasekhara Reddy made it clear in Visakhapatnam that the naxalite menace acting as an impediment to the Fab City project, as was pointed out by Kumaraswamy, was a non-issue. On Sunday, SemIndia has settled the issue once and for all. |