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SmartCity meet not to take up contentious issues

KOCHI: A meeting of the board of directors of SmartCity Kochi will be held at Hotel Ramada on Monday at 4 p.m.

As in the case of the last director board meeting held on March 29, this meeting too is an exercise to satisfy the statutory requirements under the Companies Act. It was mandatory to hold the director board meeting once every three months.

The meeting was unlikely to take up the controversial issues that had withheld the implementation of the project for quite some time now.

Minister's stand

At the last meeting, Fisheries Minister S. Sarma, who is also chairman of SmartCity Kochi, had adopted a stand that the board meeting was not the platform for discussing pending issues.

Such issues had to be discussed at the government level as per an agreement reached between the government and the SmartCity.

He further said he was merely a member like rest of those in the board and was not authorised to take any decision on behalf of the government.

Later, talking to The Hindu, SmartCity Chief Executive Officer Fareed Abdulrahman had lamented about the futility of holding board meetings without any representative authorised by the government to act decisively on the project. He aired a similar opinion earlier this month while talking to reporters in Dubai.

The project had been in a limbo over a host of issues, including the right to free hold over 12 per cent of the project land.

While the company maintains that it had been ensured in the original framework agreement, the government calls it a premature demand eyeing real estate gains.

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