Bhubaneswar, Oct. 30: The Odisha government today urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi for an early approval of the establishment of an Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) in the state.

In a letter, chief minister Naveen Patnaik said the “operationalisation of this project will contribute to the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives by the Union government”, stating that in both these programmes, the information technology (IT), IT-enabled service (ITES) and the Electronics System Designing and Manufacturing (ESDM) were the major thrust areas.

On April 13, 2010, the Odisha government had submitted a detailed project report to the Union department of electronics and information technology (DeitY) to set up an ITIR in Bhubaneswar.

“The report was cleared by a high-power committee under the cabinet secretary and all necessary clarifications regarding the project have already been sent to DeitY. But, the matter is still pending at the central government level,” said the chief minister.

The proposed project with a cost of Rs 3,700 crore will come up in 10,210 acres with a processing area of 4,300 acres to house IT/ITES/Electronics Hardware Manufacturing and R&D centres. It is likely to generate over two lakh job opportunities in the IT, ITES and ESDM sectors, official sources said.

Out of the total project cost of Rs 3,700 crore, the Centre is supposed to give Rs 1,750 crore. The Odisha government, on its part, will provide the required infrastructure.

It has identified land for the project between Bhubaneswar and Khurda and committed to bear Rs 350 crore to be spent on power transformer infrastructure required for the project.

The project has been proposed to be set up in the region near Infocity-II being developed by the Odisha government on the city outskirts.

In January, the Odisha government sent the clarifications sought by the Centre. In July, state IT minister Pranab Prakash Das had written to Union minister for communications and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad, urging for early approval of the project. But, the response is awaited, said an official of the state IT department.

The Centre has recently accorded in principle approval to set up an Electronics Manufacturing Cluster and Rs 96.96-crore grant has been sanctioned for the cluster, which will be developed in 215.76 acres.