LUCKNOW: Over 300 employees of IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) turned up at the door of UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath at dawn Saturday to ask him to stop the company from moving from Lucknow to Noida.
The company has had a presence in the UP capital for 33 years.
Adityanath promised to do everything to stop TCS from leaving Lucknow. "TCS is our pride. We won’t let it go," he said and disclosed that he would resolve the issue in consultation with the state’s chief secretary by Tuesday.
Some 2,000 employees, half of them women, are likely to be affected by the company's plan to shift to Noida. Saying nothing in black and white, the decision was conveyed to employees on Wednesday through team leaders.
Employees said that for some time now, the company had been asking them to accept transfers to other locations such as Delhi, Mumbai or Noida or face layoffs.
Coming just after the newly-elected BJP government in UP approved a new industrial and investment policy, TCS’ move is likely to be looked at as a setback to the Adityanath dispensation's efforts to attract investment to the state. The government is hoping tomake Lucknow an IT hub in northern India, and has allocated Rs 40 crore for IT education in its annual budget.
Notably, a TCS vice-president who heads operations in the north for the company, visited Lucknow Wednesday to direct various project heads to wind up operations by December. However, the company said in a statement issued Thursday that it was only consolidating its operations in Noida and there would be no job loss as a consequence.