‘Come to Vizag’: Andhra IT minister Nara Lokesh invites BlackBuck CEO Rajesh Yabaji

NEW DELHI: Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh has invited BlackBuck co-founder and CEO Rajesh Yabaji to displacement his institution to Visakhapatnam, aft the entrepreneur announced plans to determination retired of Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road (ORR) area. “Hi Rajesh, tin I involvement you successful relocating your institution to Vizag? We are rated among the apical 5 cleanest cities successful India, are gathering best-in-class infrastructure, and person been rated the safest metropolis for women. Please nonstop maine a DM,” Lokesh wrote connected X.The outreach came days aft Yabaji posted that BlackBuck would permission its Bellandur bureau aft 9 years. He said commuting successful the ORR agelong had go “very hard to continue”, with employees facing journeys of implicit 90 minutes each mode connected pothole-ridden roads. “Roads afloat of potholes and dust, coupled with the lowest intent to get them rectified. Did not spot immoderate of this changing successful the adjacent 5 years,” Yabaji wrote, without clarifying whether the institution would relocate wrong Bengaluru oregon extracurricular the city.

Industry interest implicit governance

The determination has sparked statement wrong Bengaluru’s IT ecosystem. Former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai described it arsenic a “big nonaccomplishment of governance”, portion manufacture groups warned that mediocre infrastructure was driving firms away.

Krishna Kumar Gowda, General Secretary of the Greater Bengaluru IT Companies & Industries Association, said: “The determination of starring firms to determination retired highlights the urgent request for authorities intervention. We telephone for a transparent roadmap to amended roads, metro connectivity and nationalist utilities.” The discontent coincided with a viral video of schoolchildren connected a jolting autobus thrust on a cratered metropolis road, which reignited nationalist choler implicit Bengaluru’s civic neglect.

Government response

Deputy main curate and Bengaluru Development Minister D K Shivakumar precocious announced a ₹1,100 crore program for repairing and constructing roads, promising “pothole-free” stretches crossed each constituencies. But residents stay sceptical. A Times of India survey recovered heavy craters patched with uneven cement that washed distant successful the rain. Some commuters described the roads arsenic “death traps”. In Judicial Layout, wherever respective elder officials reside, residents person adjacent written poems astir the authorities of the roads and sent them to the Prime Minister’s Office. Meanwhile, successful Jayanagar, residents frustrated by dug-up streets and breached footpaths person staged protests, accusing civic bodies of neglecting promises of “model roads.” Basavaraj Kabade, main technologist of the South City Corporation, said a database of roads requiring urgent repair was being finalised. “We’ll guarantee the roads are fixed astatine the earliest,” helium added.