Karnataka govt spent Rs 74.99 crore on investors’ meet: Nirani

The government spent Rs 74.99 crore to organise Invest Karnataka, the flagship global investors meet last month, Industries Minister Murugesh Nirani told the Council on Tuesday.

‘Invest Karnataka,’ held between November 2 and 4, resulted in the government inking business deals worth Rs 9.8 lakh crore.

Nirani was responding to questions by Congress members K Govindaraj, M Nagaraju, Manjunath Bhandary and U B Venkatesh.

According to Nirani, the highest expenditure incurred was to provide basic infrastructure facilities and other services at the event.

Out of Rs 74.99 crore that was spent, Rs 50.68 crore went towards the basics. Also, the government spent Rs 14.54 crore on media and publicity. This led to a heated argument in the upper house.

“In the first global investors meet in 2010, the government spent over Rs 30 crore for similar activities and claimed to have signed memorandums of understanding worth Rs 3.94 lakh crore, of which only 14 per cent were implemented,” Venkatesh said.

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Leader of the Opposition B K Hariprasad objected to spending such a huge amount on publicity alone and said the money could have been used for welfare schemes benefiting the citizens.

“The same amount can be utilised to provide scholarships to students,” he said.

Nirani clarified that the government did not use taxpayers’ money to organise ‘Invest Karnataka’.

The money came from interest earned on deposits by investors. “Over Rs 2,200 crore has been deposited by potential investors to get land from our land bank,” he said.

Meanwhile, Nirani accused the previous Siddaramaiah-led Congress government for keeping investors away from Karnataka.

“In the first Cabinet meeting, the Siddaramaiah government denotified around 1.25 lakh acres that were acquired from farmers for a land bank. As there was no land available, investors went away,” he said.