Bengal SEZs hit land reforms hurdle

More than one special economic zone (SEZ) in West Bengal are stuck even after receiving all formal approvals because of the refusal of the state land and land reforms department (LLRD) to record the change in status of the land from farm land to one eligible for industrial use.

The failure of the land reforms department has also held up finalization of the financing package for the SEZs because the proposals could not be placed before bankers with the land recorded as agricultural land.

This problem had been pointed out to the district magistrate and to the local development board, the Asansol Durgapur Development Authority (ADDA), but the necessary change was yet to be recorded by the LLRD, industry sources here pointed out.

Recently, a team from the West Bengal legislative assembly visited the site and the LLRD problem was conveyed to the team as well. “LLRD kept a record of the nature of land and the people linked to it, like the owner, the sharecropper, the registered agricultural labourers and casual labourers linked to the plot, under the Left Front’s land reforms programme”, a said retired bureaucrat who had earlier served at the top levels of the state administration and worked the land reforms campaign of the Left.

The laws on land reforms were very stringent and records not easy to amend, as they were devised to ensure that land owners could not change land use patterns and thereby throw out the other dependants on the land.

This was done in 1978-80, in an era when demand for land for industrial purposes was low.

These stringent provisions were now hurdles before approved SEZ projects and holding up development of infrastructure, he admitted.

Among projects stuck before the LLRD was the 71 acre information technology (IT) sector SEZ at Panagarh in Bardhaman district 160km from Kolkata on National Highway 2.

This SEZ was notified in August 2007 and was being developed by the Kolkata-based Sonthalia group. The IT Panagarh SEZ master planning was being done by Voyants Solutions, a Ramky Infrastructure group outfit, and project planning by IL&FS as technical consultants and equity partner in the project.

Also stuck was the Sonthalia group’s 25 acre biotech SEZ at the same stie for which land was in hand and formal approval received from the board of approvals (BOA) of the Union ministry of commerce (MoC).

The Panagarh biotech SEZ demand study was done by Jones Lang Lasalle Meghraj while IL&FS was the technical advisor and equity partner. Sonthalia group recently proposed a third, 25-acre, SEZ dedicated to solar energy also at Panagarh, after acquiring land for the project.

Application for approval had been filed with BOA-MoC, backed by a recommendation from the state department of information technology.

The Sonthalia group was also developing two SEZs in the Rajarhat area, just east of Kolkata’s city limits.