Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday unveiled Chandigarh as the next major IT destination of the country with the inauguration of the Rajiv Gandhi Technology Park here.
After inaugurating the first phase of the technology park, the prime minister said that India’s future development lay in the IT and other technology sectors.
“This region has been the granary of the country with strides in agriculture following the green revolution in 1960s and 70s. The momentum of development has not been maintained in the last few years. Now sectors like IT and bio-technology could change that in the future,” he said.
Manmohan Singh said a second revolution was required in north India to push development further and IT and biotech could do that.
The new IT Park was likely to create nearly 20,000 jobs for software professionals in the next one to two years. The jobs on offer by the time the IT Park was completed was targeted at 50,000 in five years.
IT giant Infosys had already completed the first phase of its campus at the IT Park. Another campus by construction company DLF was also ready for software companies to move into built-up sites.
The inauguration of the IT Park was not without controversy, with opposition parties objecting to the IT Park being named after former Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi just two days before its inauguration.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and various Akali parties in Punjab protested against the naming after Gandhi.
Local Congress MP Pawan Kumar Bansal defended the naming of the IT Park saying it was on the former prime minister’s initiative that India was witnessing technological advances in all fields now.
Earlier, the prime minister addressed a gathering to mark the 125 years of The Tribune newspaper group.
