State govt to provide freehold land rights to Wipro on New Town plot

Kolkata: The state government has decided to provide freehold land rights to IT major Wipro on its 50-acre plot in New Town. The plot has been leased out to Wipro for 99 years.

It has also been learnt that the state government will allow Wipro to use 49 percent of the land for non-IT purposes. The concessions will be given to Wipro for setting up the company's second campus in the city. The state government has also decided to offer a host of benefits to the company, to compensate for the tax concessions that one gets under Special Economic Zone (SEZ) grounds. The state government has also offered free holding right to the company so that it can develop facilities of its choice. The company's initial proposal says that the second campus of Wipro is likely to create around 18,000 additional jobs. At present there are around 7,500 people working at the first campus that came up on 25 acres in Salt Lake's Sector V as an SEZ in 2005, during the Left Front regime. It may be mentioned here that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing the 'Save Green Stay Clean' event in Nazrul Mancha on August 1, had announced that the company has agreed to operate its second campus on a 50-acre plot in the Silicon Valley IT Hub in New Town, with an investment of Rs 500 crore.