Software icon N R Narayana Murthy opposed the practice of acquiring farm lands for special economic zones on Wednesday, saying that the earlier practice of companies building their own campuses was good enough.

"I agree that we cannot take land from farmers", the non-executive chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Limited told reporters, who sought his views on the raging debate over SEZs.

"The earlier policy, where individual companies were building their own campuses, was a good one," he said, adding that bringing real estate players in between was probably not the best thing to do.

"And that's why all this furore has been created. I think the earlier policy of requesting companies to deal directly to get land and build their own campuses is a good one", Murthy, the face of India's booming IT industry, added.

Me, President? No, says Murthy

The recent Nandigram incident in West Bengal, where 11 people were killed in police firing during a protest, is likely to have "some repercussions", he said.

"Because, at the end of the day, let's remember that news travels through Internet pretty quickly and given that it is so, people all over the world will read it and perhaps in some ways some of them will misinterpret it too. So in that sense there is always a danger of having some repercussions", he added.