Odisha pollution control board extends validity of consent order for DLF

The Odisha State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) has extended the validity of the consent to establish order issued to DLF Ltd for a period of five years. The revised order is now valid till August 30, 2017.

The order is for DLF’s Cyber City project coming up at Patia on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar. DLF is investing Rs 1,000 crore on the commercial IT real estate project where apart from an IT park and ITes (IT enabled services) establishment, business centres, hotel and retail services as well as service apartments are being developed over an area measuring 54 acres.

The extension of validity order by DLF is subject to revalidation of environment clearance for the project by the proponent.

DLF has readied the first phase of its DLF Cybercity project for commercial operations.

DLF Cybercity is expected to house some of the major IT/ITes companies like Mindfire, IN2IT Technologies and Luminous Infoways. A Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) unit is already functional at the tower and another large BPO is expected to be running its operations shortly. The tower also houses the Nexa outlet of Maruti Suzuki.

Once the first tower is fully occupied, nearly 5000 people would be engaged.

The entire land has mixed development components including hotel, shopping mall, club house, service apartments and accommodation. DLFCybercity is planned as an integrated township, which would have mixed development and provide’ walk to work-live-entertain-shop-leisure’ within the same area.

DLF announced its foray into Odisha in 2009, months ahead of the general elections.

The project, however, was marred by delay as lack of demand in IT space forced DLF to hold back construction work.

DLF also got into a face-off with state-owned land acquisition agency Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) over keeping a substantial chunk of land idle.

Idco had alloted 54 acres of land to DLF at a prime location on the city's outskirts. In May last year, it warned of stringent action against DLF for keeping a large chunk of land idle meant for developing its Rs 1000-crore Infopark project. Of the 54 acres allotted to DLF for the project, only seven acres have been utilised till date. DLF had at the time termed the Idco missive 'wrongful and illegal'.