Karnataka govt retracts WFH advisory for IT companies along Bengaluru Outer Ring Road after backlash

The Karnataka government recently asked Information Technology (IT) parks along the Outer Ring Road to (ORR) extend their Work From Home (WFH) period till December 2022 by urging companies to allow this move in order to reduce traffic congestion due to the Bengaluru metro construction work. The Department of Electronics, Information Technology, informed the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) in a letter that construction work will start on the ORR from Central Silk Road to KR Puram. The work is expected to last for about one and a half to two years. The letter stressed that the WFH option will reduce traffic activity in the area. EV Ramana Reddy, Additional Chief Secretary, Department of Electronics, IT, BT & Science and Technology, NASSCOM, also issued an advisory on 21 August for the same. The advisory added that if employees have to work from offices, they are encouraged to travel by bus. It added that the government would implement safe cycling lanes and Bus Priority Lanes (BPL) for those who will pass through the ORR. Days after the advisory was put out, many people working in the ORR IT parks asked Karnataka IT Minister Dr C N Ashwath Narayan on social media to revise the notification. The members of the Outer Ring Road Companies Association (ORRCA) also asked the government to explain its stand. The government clarified its stand later. Reddy issued a new notification saying that the advisory was not mandatory and should not be treated as such. The ORR stretch consists of business parks and offices like Cessna Business Park, Embassy Tech Village, and Prestige Tech Park. These hubs house prominent global companies such as JP Morgan, Accenture, ANZ, Intel, Flipkart, Cisco, IBM, Dell, Goldman Sachs, and Microsoft. As per ORRCA consultant Krishna Kumar Gowda, there are about nine or ten technology parks around the ORR stretch, which consisted of 700 to 800 companies. Over 1.5 lakh people worked the stretch before the pandemic hit.