Punjab industry looks to Uttar Pradesh with nearly 150 new units

Last month, a delegation met the chief minister Yogi Adityanath who promised them uninterrupted power, cheaper land and labour

Industrialists from Punjab are looking to set up nearly 150 new units in Uttar Pradesh after the neighbouring state wooed them with incentives at a meeting last month.

 

Traders from the industrial hub of Ludhiana met Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath following an invitation from him to set up manufacturing units in the state. The Uttar Pradesh government has offered land at cheaper rates, uninterrupted and subsidised power supply, and promised a peaceful environment if they want to set up industrial units.

 

Among those who met the CM was Gurmeet Singh Kular, an industrialist and a politician who fought the 2017 Assembly elections in Punjab on a Shiromani Akali (SAD) ticket. Until a year ago, SAD was a long-time ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which is in power in Uttar Pradesh.

 

Kular said the meeting ended on an optimistic note. “The Uttar Pradesh government has promised to provide all possible support and has also promised to fast-track all kinds of permissions for industrial projects. The chief minister stressed that we will get a peaceful environment to function.”

 

Members of the Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisation, Federation of Dyeing Factories Association, Focal Point Phase-7 Association and Purvanchal Udyogik Vikas Parishad also participated in the meeting.

 

Industry has been blighted in Punjab mainly due to two reasons — power supply restrictions for heavy industrial units and unavailability of skilled and semi-skilled labour after workers returned in droves to their homes due to loss of jobs after the Covid-19 pandemic-induced lockdown last year.

 

Ram Ughra Shukla, president, Atal Purvanchal Udyogik Vikas Parishad, said that apart from the 150 units that are being set up in Uttar Pradesh, another 51 industrialists — a majority from Punjab — have in principle accepted the offer. He pointed out that there was a lot of ongoing migration of labour from eastern Uttar Pradesh to other states in search of jobs.

 

“As a result, whatever little we had in the name of industry was also on the verge of closure. But with the fresh initiative by the UP government, industry will get a big boost and the migration of labour to Punjab and other states, too, would end,” he added.

 

Industry in Punjab has suffered as around 200,000 skilled and semi-skilled labourers went back to their hometowns, mainly in UP and Bihar, in April 2020 soon after the pandemic struck. When the situation began to normalise in October last year, only half that number returned. But as the second wave of Covid-19 swept across the region, it was back to square one. Punjab industry is still reeling under power and labour crisis.

 

“The UP chief minister told us we could set up industrial clusters in areas around the Yamuna Expressway near the upcoming Noida International Greenfield Airport in Jewar,” said T R Mishra, chairperson of the Federation of Dyeing Factories Association.

 

Mishra described the move towards Uttar Pradesh as a win-win situation for all — industrialists, labourers and the state government. When the same labour force goes to Punjab, he said, they have to look for rented accommodation, which means they expect wages to go up. But once the same factories start operations in UP, labour, he added will be available at cheaper rates.