Bengaluru:
A global investors meet planned by the Karnataka government for the end of November, has been postponed to early next year due to the ongoing drought conditions in the state.
"Global Investors Meet - we were to have it on 23rd, 24th, 25th of November. We have made all arrangements and preparations. Recently I had a road show also in Delhi... but what has happened unfortunately, we have not seen for the last 44 years the severe drought we are seeing today. 136 taluks have declared drought. Our hydel dependence is more. So we felt with farmers in distress, agriculture labour in distress, even Dasara we are doing in low-profile. So we thought it fit that we have the Global investors meet on 3rd, 4th, 5th February 2016," said Industries minister RV Deshpande.
His colleague in the cabinet, power minister DK Shivakumar, made it clear that the postponement was not due to power shortages as speculated in some media reports. Bengaluru had been facing power cuts as long as far hours until a few days ago - but the cuts were stopped from Wednesday after the power situation improved.
"As far as power is concerned, I assure the people of this country to come and invest from next December we will have our own generation which will be up and more than 2000MW of power will be added. As far as the Global Investors meet is concerned, I am already on record to the industries department, to the investors, that we will give you power. You come to Karnataka," Mr Shivakumar told NDTV.
Neighbouring Tamil Nadu had a recent investors meet which was seen as a success with huge investments promised.