Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa declared on Saturday that the US-based electric vehicle and clean energy company Tesla will set up its production unit here.
“American car company Tesla will set up its electric car division in Karnataka,” Yediyurappa said in a statement, which mainly aimed at appreciating the Union Budget that was presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.
On January 12, Yediyurappa had tweeted from his official handle that Tesla would start its operations in India with an R&D unit in Bengaluru. But the Tweet was deleted after a couple of hours by which time it had garnered more than 8,500 likes and 1,800 retweets.
Breaking his silence after the news broke that Tesla has finally entered India by registering it as a company in Bengaluru, its CEO Elon Musk said on January 13 that he is on the way to fulfil his promise to let electric cars run on the roads of India.
Reacting to his 41.2 million followers, Musk tweeted on making India his next destination: “As promised”.
The world’s richest man was replying to a tweet linked to a blog post on the Tesla fan site, Tesmanian, which noted that Tesla cars will be expensive for Indians but the cars will become more affordable for the country’s middle class when the company starts production within India.
In the statement released in appreciation of the Union Budget, Yediyurappa said that the state would get Rs 10.904 crore for 33 national highway projects spanning 1,197 km. In north Karnataka, 13 highway projects worth Rs 21,000 crore have been cleared.
These projects were announced much before the Union government tabled its budget.
The CM said an industrial corridor is coming up at Tumakuru at a cost of Rs 7,725 crore that would generate 2.8 lakh jobs. He added that the state will get basic infrastructure updates worth Rs 1.16 lakh crore in the 2021-22 fiscal year.
“Bengaluru will receive Rs 14,788 crore for Phase 2 of the Namma Metro project and Rs 23,093 crore for the suburban rail project. For other railway projects, the state will get Rs 4,870 crore,” he said.
Describing it as a historic budget, he said that the tunnel project at Shiradi Ghat connecting Bengaluru and Mangaluru has been approved. “Rs 10,000 crore will be released for the 13 km tunnel,” the CM said.