Kerala to get an IIT soon

Kerala will soon have an Indian Institute of Technology, Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan said on Tuesday in his Independence Day address.

"An IIT in Kerala will soon become a reality. It will come up over 250 acres at a cost of Rs 8 billion," he said.

He said Kerala would have a record 200,000 IT jobs in the next five years with the development of the Infopark in Kochi and the Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram.

Further, Achuthanandan said he took pride in his government's decision to ban both Coke and Pepsi for their alleged pesticide content.

"We feel it is a big achievement that we have been able to stop the production of both Pepsi and Coke. For the past four and a half years, people of Plachimada village in Palakkad district, where Coke had its production unit, have been waging a bitter struggle against water exploitation by the Coke factory," he said.