KTR urges Nirmala Sitharaman to include Hyderabad in the defence corridor

IT, industries, mines and municipal administration minister K T Rama Rao on Thursday met Union defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and requested her to include Hyderabad in the defence industrial production corridor, which was announced recently by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley.

While presenting the budget, Jaitley had announced that two corridors would be developed for defence production, both in the public as well as the private sector. It may be mentioned that in the public sector, a lot of defence production takes place in Hyderabad. A number of private firms are also associated with this. If Hyderabad is added in the defence



industrial production corridors, more private sector manufacturing companies will get involved.

A few days after Jaitley’s budget announcement, Sitharaman said the first corridor would link Chennai, Bengaluru and Coimbatore. Since a second corridor is yet to be announced, K T Rama Rao pitched for Hyderabad to be included in it.

On his visit to New Delhi, Rama Rao, accompanied by TRS MPs, also met Union minister of environment Harsh Vardhan and requested him to expedite the process of environmental clearance for Hyderabad Pharma City. KTR described the project as being of ‘national importance’.