Cool Bihari: Industrialists Showing Keen interest In Bihar

It appears that industry has really paid heed to the Bihar calling message of the new govt. in Bihar. Some of the country's top trading and financial institutions have expressed their eagerness to give Bihar a try.

A select group of the country's top industrialists recently participated in a FICCI-sponsored meet — "Bihar Investment Promotion Campaign Programme" — in New Delhi. In an interaction with Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, they discussed wide-ranging proposals to invest in different sectors, including the hospitality industry.
The industry bigwigs who met Nitish Kumar included Bharti Telecom (Airtel) Jt MD Rajan Bharti Mittal, hotelier Lalit Suri, Xpro chairman Siddharth Birla, Bata chairman P M Sinha and Apollo Tyres CMD Onkar S Kanwar. Bihar's resident commissioner in Delhi C K Mishra told TOI on Monday that Indian Leasing Finance Services (ILFS) was preparing a project report for setting up a textile park in Bihar.
"Several top industrial houses, including the Birlas, have shown keen interest in the textile park project which would be a one-stop mega manufacturing centre for export items — from thread to garments," Mishra said. "Similarly, hotelier Lalit Suri has also evinced keen interest in setting up star hotels in the Buddhist circuit, including Patna."

Some of the investors discussed the idea of town planning such as setting up projects like Greater Patna. Several others, including Fortis, expressed their desire to build and operate state-of-art hospitals in the state, said the resident commissioner. Over a dozen prospective investors have so far submitted concrete project reports to invest in various sectors like real estate, energy, health, food processing, entertainment, roads and educational institutions. They are interested in getting land in prime locations for their projects.

Noted filmmaker Prakash Jha has already taken lead — as a facilitator — by getting Manmohan Shetty's Adlabs agree to set up a series of shopping malls-cum-multiplexes in Patna and other cities in the state. CM Nitish Kumar is likely to lay the foundation stone of the first such project adjacent to the industrial estate at Pataliputra Colony in the state capital on April 27

In another announcement “Selvel, announced its decision to build two pedestrian bridges in the capital – one outside Patna Junction near the Mahavir Temple and the other one connecting the Maurya Lok Shopping Complex to the other side towards Chhajjubagh.

Some more good news as Japan has made a proposal to revive the historic Nalanda University in Bihar as a major international school of learning.The proposal was made by a 30-member Japanese delegation comprising leaders from the field of politics, business, education and culture which met Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan here on Tuesday.

The delegation, led by D S Uchide, wanted the minister to take the lead and assured that ‘‘they will initiate the process of fund raising and other support in rebuilding the world famous institution of education’’, a Lok Janshakti Party release said.At the Buddha Jayanti celebrations organised by Mahabodhi society here on Monday, Paswan supported the idea mooted by the society’s president B K Modi to give citizenship to Buddhist Tibetans, who had been living in India for decades, the release said.

The Central government, after a delay of nearly a year and a half, on Tuesday, issued a tender for the construction of a software park in Patna – a project that had been stuck in the political red-tape since the former Chief Minister Mrs. Rabri Devi announced its set up back in November 2004.The tender was issued by the Software Technology Park of India (STPI) under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology to build the administrative building at the New Government Polytechnic Complex in Pataliputra Colony in Patna, state Science and Technology minister Anil Kumar Sinha said.

To be built at the cost of Rs. 30 crore on a three acre land, the work on the project is expected to begin within a month, Sinha said.Despite having been sanctioned the land and Rs. 1 crore for the project in November 2004, the project had been gathering dust because of political uncertainty in Bihar. However, since coming into power last November, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had been applying pressure on the UPA government to provide the much-needed momentum to the project that finally yielded result on Tuesday.

Posted by Ajit Chouhan on Wednesday, April 12, 2006 at 2:07 PM | Permalink