Bengal govt seeks new partners for Dankuni township project

Years after the Trinamool Congress stalled the construction of one of the biggest township projects in the country at Dankuni in West Bengal, the ruling government is now pursuing to develop another township in the area.

The government is readying a fresh blue-print for the Dankuni project, the land for which would be acquired in accordance with the yet-to-be-announced land acquisition policy of the government, said Firad Hakim, Urban Development Minister, West Bengal.

Formulated by the earlier Left Front government, the 4,840 acres, the Dankuni township was hailed as one of the biggest public private partnership (PPP) projects in the country, with an expected investment of Rs 33,000 crore. Real estate major DLF was to develop the project, which ran into trouble over land acquisition around 2009 on low compensation prices.

DLF had paid Rs 271 crore to the state government in 2007 after it emerged as the highest bidder, leaving developers like Emaar-MGF, Suncity and Bengal Ambuja behind. Subsequently, DLF had quit the project.

However, for the ruling Trinamool government too, land acquisition might come as a biggest hurdle for the project.

According to the Land Acquisition and Resettlement Bill of the new government, private players will have to acquire land for their projects directly from the land owners. The new policy provides that the government will acquire land only for projects of public utility like building bridges, hospitals, laying railway tracks, setting up of embankments, irrigation projects and projects relating to internal security.

Thus, KMDA would have to intervene to reach tripartite agreement for a deal with developers and land loosers, on a consensus on a agreeable land price, said a real estate developer.

The government was planning to build segments of township in separate public private partnership, rather than one integrated PPP project, said Hakim.

Dankuni had been a site of simmering tension since the panchayat elections of 2008, when several political outfits and farmers’ lobbies began an agitation over the low compensation being offered for land. While DLF had offered the government a price of Rs 56 lakh an acre, or around Rs 2,700 crore for development rights on the land over 999 years, the land procurement committee for the project offered farmers Rs 7 lakh an acre for fallow land, Rs 12 lakh for multi-crop land and Rs 14 lakh for homesteads. Thus, KMDA, the implementing agency, has been unable to procure even a portion of the land, something it never anticipated.