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B-school: 'AP's gain is not Karnataka's loss'

At a press conference in Bangalore after a foreign tour, he said the school had absolutely no relevance to industrial growth. Only students from abroad would be trained and they wanted free land for a project with an initial investment of Rs 1.5 billion. If they wanted to save money on land let them set up in Hyderabad, he added.

The industrialists had earlier approached Karnataka to set up the school before Andhra Pradesh wooed them.

Asked whether he considered Hyderabad a rival on the investment front, Patel replied in the negative and pointed out that Japan, France and other European countries were competitors.

It was politically not proper to go to the United States now, he said in an obvious reference to his Andhra Pradesh counterpart Nara Chandrababu Naidu's US visit to woo investors. The United States had imposed sanctions on India in the wake of Pokhran nuclear tests, he pointed out.

On the Bharatiya Janata Party's proposed jail bharo agitation tomorrow in protest against power tariff hike and other things in the state, he said: "Let them do it. They would be treated well in jails," he quipped.

Stressing that the hike in power tariff was inevitable, he said the Karnataka Electricity Board should be paid at least maintenance cost. None of the industrialists had left the state, because of the power tariff increase, he added.

UNI