Official involvement strong in Aranmula project

Time of India

17-06-2025

T'puram: As criticism over the state's renewed push for a township project on the controversial Aranmula land grows, internal documents accessed by TOI expose the depth of official involvement.
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Far from being a routine proposal, the plan by M/s TOFL Pathanamthitta Infra Ltd was seriously pursued across multiple departments — including IT, finance, law, industries and revenue — with Technopark even clearing it for co-branding under Kerala's flagship IT identity.
The IT department's internal note clearly establishes that the proposal was not confined to Kerala State Information Technology Infrastructure Ltd (KSITIL) or its boardroom.
The industries department noted that it was already examining the proposal to set up an electronics manufacturing cluster (EMC) as a joint venture through Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) and added that the matter was currently pending before the revenue department due to land-related concerns.
The seriousness of intent becomes even more evident in the next set of communications. The IT department sought detailed responses from the finance and law departments on two specific aspects: KSITIL holding sweat equity shares in TOFL and nominating a govt director to its board.
The finance department demanded key documentation: a detailed project report, KSITIL board approvals, remarks from revenue, environment, industries and law departments and a formal statement on whether the proposal aligned with the state's IT policy.
The law department, in its reply, offered an interpretation grounded in the Companies Act. It said sweat equity shares can only be issued to a company's directors or employees and added that no policy decision was yet taken on whether a public limited company like KSITIL could hold sweat equity in a private entity like TOFL.
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The law department further instructed that the matter must be legally examined considering the Articles and Memorandum of Association of KSITIL.
Acting on this, KSITIL placed the issue before its board and got three resolutions passed in its 66th meeting, including formally approving the acceptance of sweat equity and the creation of a nominee director post.
But the institutional push didn't stop there. The Technopark CEO weighed in with an extensive recommendation supporting co-branding of the project under its affiliation programme.
According to the note, the CEO stated that once the project achieved basic legal clearances and development milestones, it could be included under the affiliation programme "which is more suited to complete developments than greenfield projects.
" The CEO went on to assert that Technopark could provide visibility via its social media handles and even offer TOFL support in terms of consultancy and guidance for infrastructure development "if required."
The note also confirms that Technopark expressed confidence that the project would adhere to environmental and legal compliance norms and that such ventures could enhance the brand value of IT parks in Kerala. The CEO also mentioned that TOFL's township consultancy might be shaped to meet the minimum requirements of an IT park and that the terms of such collaboration could be mutually agreed upon later.
Put together, these revelations debunk any notion that the township proposal was just another file doing the rounds in govt corridors.
The fact that so many departments were mobilised, that KSITIL passed official board resolutions, that the law department weighed in on corporate structure, and that Technopark was preparing to allow the use of its branding, all point to a system-wide coordination effort—suggesting that the govt was well past the exploratory phase and began constructing the institutional framework needed to partner with TOFL on a massive, politically sensitive project.
This comes in the backdrop of the govt already facing flak for entertaining a project on the same 335 acres of ecologically fragile land once earmarked for the scrapped Aranmula airport—land the LDF govt itself claimed needed to be protected. The latest disclosures may add fuel to that criticism, not just for their implications on environmental policy, but also for the apparent policy U-turn in aligning with a private player it once publicly opposed, now with deeper institutional ties and branding alliances.
The questions now go beyond policy consistency and touch upon the transparency and process by which such large-scale partnerships are constructed — with sweat equity, brand sharing and public sector endorsement all being considered for a project that rests on ecologically and politically volatile terrain.