Work on Wipro second campus to start soon

India's third largest service provider Wipro Technologies, is set to begin construction on Rajarhat campus, the second in the city, 'as quickly as possible', said state information technology minister, Debesh Das.

Das made the announcement post a meeting Wipro chairman, Azim Premji had with West Bengal chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Premji is in Kolkata for the Reserve Bank of India board meeting.

"They [Wipro] are going to scale up operations in West Bengal in a big way now. The company currently has 6,500 employees at their Sector V campus, but the expansion capacities at the campus are limited. They have no choice but to look elsewhere," said Das.

The Sector V campus incidentally is spread over 12 floors, with a housing capacity for 8,000 employees. India's third richest man met the CM at Writers' in a meeting that has been described as being largely positive given Wipro's scaled up levels of interest in Bengal.

"The campus at Rajarhat will provide employment to about 20, 000 people. The process of infrastructure development such as approach roads is almost complete, and should be finished with a month," Das said.

Das claiming that the facilities that the state provided Wipro, were the best in India, the IT minister, referred to the Trinamool Congress campaign in Rajarhat, stating that no industry would leave Bengal again.

TMC, it might be noted, has scaled up protests against illegal land acquisition in Rajarhat recently and is set to gherao West Bengal Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited on Thursday.

The IT minister also referred to problems with land allotment and pricing in areas such as Rajarhat. "The government cannot scale up and down prices, based on market movement", he said.

Wipro is partnering Bengal in 40 municipal projects and is setting up the State Data Centre in a project worth Rs 30 crore (Rs 300 million).

The SDC project is nearing completion and was also discussed at the meeting, Das revealed.