Calcutta, Feb. 21: Madhu Koda missed out on a golden chance. A flight delay this morning ruined his mission to promote Jharkhand as an IT destination at Infocom in Calcutta.

Infocom, an initiative of Businessworld, an ABP Group publication which also publishes The Telegraph, is a four-day conference and exhibition of information communication and technology (ICT) that opened today.

Koda, slated to be the guest of honour, missed the interactive platform at the inaugural session where IT honchos shared their vision with fellow businessmen and executives.

Koda got delayed as the Calcutta-Ranchi flight could not land in the capital this morning due to inclement weather. A rescheduled inaugural programme was chalked out — after the flight landed at Ranchi at 11am —to accommodate the chief minister.

But Koda sent a missive a little before noon that he would not be able to make it. Sources close to the chief minister said that “he did not want to miss the inaugural session” and since he had missed it, he thought it better to stay put at his Kanke Road residence.

However, an Infocom official said if Koda wanted, a special interactive session with IT bosses could have been arranged at the conference venue.

Jharkhand, on the fast track to adopting various e-governance measures, is the partner state of Infocom this year.

Meanwhile, Bengal IT minister Debesh Das announced the setting up of a training centre for semi-conductors — a 15-acre plot had been earmarked for it near IIT, Kharagpur — and a hardware academy.

But anxious delegates remained in the dark about the Koda government’s hardware or software plans.

What Chandrababu Naidu did for Hyderabad a decade ago, Koda could have done today at Infocom where country heads of Microsoft, Fujitsu, IBM, TCS, Wipro and a host of other companies were present.