Bengaluru: Karnataka Health Minister K. Sudhakar on Tuesday said that Hyderabad still needs more time to compete with Bengaluru in terms of becoming a hotspot for IT-BT investments.
Responding to Telangana Urban Development and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao’s call for an entrepreneur to move out of Karnataka on social media, he said: “Being a son of the Chief Minister, he (Ramarao) cannot talk about things so lightly.”
Minister Sudhakar further stated: “You (Ramarao) need more years to compare yourself to Bengaluru and to compete with the city. Probably, when the BJP government is established in Hyderabad, then competition might be possible.”
Karnataka started the first IT department in India
Why Bengaluru is called Silicon City? How many startups are there in Bengaluru? Let them tell how many are there in Hyderabad? “I don’t want to compare, that is also a city in our country,” minister Sudhakar said.
“Karnataka started the first IT department in the entire country, our competition is not against Hyderabad, Delhi or Mumbai. We are competing with Singapore and the US,” he said.
“Of course there are loopholes here regarding infrastructure, I agree. But, the IT sector won’t move out just because of the condition of roads. Roads are important though. The IT sector needs an ecosystem. They -need human resources, engineers, and startups, he said.
Congress vs BJP over infrastructure
Asked about Shivakumar’s comments that Karnataka would take his challenge after 2023 elections when Congress comes to power, Sudhakar said, who was in power between 2013 and 2019? All these infrastructure challenges are created by Congress. Why didn’t they create better road infrastructure then? They could have taken the challenge in 2013 itself, he said.
Refuting allegations that BJP is behind the recent developments in the state, he said that BJP leaders are not talking about anything. No BJP leader is commenting or talking about anything in the state. The issues are spoken by the common man. The government is guiding them properly. Everything is being done for politics by Congress, he said.
Ravish Naresh, an entrepreneur from Bengaluru earlier stated that startups in HSR, Koramangala (India’s Silicon Valley) are already generating billions of dollars of taxes. “Yet we have bad roads, almost daily power cuts, poor quality of water supply, unusable foot paths. Many rural areas now have better basic infra than India’s Silicon Valley. He further stated that also the airport is 3 hours away in peak traffic.
Responding to the tweet, Ramarao called on the entrepreneur to pack his bags and move to Hyderabad. “We have better physical infrastructure and equally good social infrastructure. Our airport is one of the best and getting in and out of the city is a breeze.”
He also stated that “more importantly our government’s focus is on ‘3 i-Mantras — innovation, infrastructure and inclusive growth.”
