Gabbar Singh’s rocky Ramgarh – Ramanagaram – is set on the road to development and rival its more famous neighbour, India’s IT capital Bangalore, by becoming a new district and getting a bounty of more than Rs.5 billion investment for urban facilities.

Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy, who represents Ramanagaram in the state assembly, Thursday launched several programmes and laid foundation for many projects to make historical Hindi movie Sholay’s locale a hub of Information Technology, apparel and health sectors.

Hundreds of villagers from the neighbouring areas had come in buses and tractors to hear the chief minister’s announcement granting district status to Ramanagaram with modern education and infrastructure facilities.

Ramanagaram, about 48 km south of Bangalore on way to Mysore, shot into limelight in 1971 when Ramesh Sippy shot Sholay here with Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh, Amitab Bachchan as Jai, Dharmendra as Veeru and dreamgirl Hemamalini as Basanti.

Since then, the rocky surroundings of Ramanagaram have been a tourist attraction but remained pretty backward otherwise.

Fortune began to smile on this sleepy town, famous for its silk trade, when it elected Kumaraswamy, son of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda, to the assembly in the 2004.

According to government plans, Ramanagaram will now house the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences spread over an area of 210 acres, to which all medical colleges in the state are affiliated.

In addition a medical college, a dental college, two hospitals are also to come up. An engineering college, a general degree college, four pre-university colleges, a women’s polytechnic, a sports village, a global apparel complex and an information technology park are the other goodies for the new district.

A district offices complex costing Rs.300 million and other office buildings with an investment of Rs.330 million are also included in the ambitious plans for the new district headquarters.

The government is planning to cash in the brand Bangalore by naming Ramanagaram as Bangalore South.

One more district Chikkaballapur, about 55 km north of Bangalore, is being formed to be named Bangalore North.

In that case the truncated Bangalore district may officially be called Bangalore Central.