Smartcity Kochi- sixth meeting of the board of directors : Crucial talks to begin from today

The sixth meeting of the board of directors of the SmartCity Kochi will be held at the Taj Green Cove Resort at Kovalam on Wednesday at 6.30 p.m.

Fareed Abdulrahman, Chief Executive Officer, SmartCity, Rashid Lathif Almullah, Vice Chairman, SmartCity Kochi, Ravi Gill and Anirudha Dhamke, Directors, SmartCity, Mithun Beeru, Business Development Manager, SmartCity, Kochi, are expected to attend the meeting. Fisheries Minister S. Sarma, who is also the Chairman of SmartCity Kochi, State IT Secretary, Ajay Kumar, Siddhartha Bhattacharya, CEO, Infopark, are expected to represent the State government at the meeting.

The board is meeting after a long gap of nine months after differences over the issue of 12 per cent freehold land held up the progress of the project ever since the last board meeting held on December 21 last year. The meeting is being viewed as a precursor to the discussion between Chief Secretary Neela Gangadharan and SmartCity officials scheduled to be held from Thursday. Major breakthroughs, if any, were expected at this meeting, it is learnt.

A two-day meeting that Ms. Gangadharan had with the SmartCity team led by Abdulrahman earlier this month had proved inconclusive. It was during this meeting that a decision was taken to convene the board meeting and to further continue the chief secretary-level talks immediately thereafter to iron out the differences.