West Bengal to take auction route to allot land for industry, upsets investors

The West Bengal cabinet has decided to take the auction route to allot government land for industrial projects.

The state cabinet has cleared the “land allotment and settlement guideline policy,” according to which, for commercial projects like shopping mall, entertainment parks government land will be allotted to the highest bidder.

The auction route will be followed in case of other private industrial projects, but with some riders. In such cases, the bidders will be shortlisted on certain parameters like scale of investment, scope of employment, environmental status and track record of the concerned company. However, state government, to be precise GoM on industry headed by chief minister Mamata Banerjee, will take the final decision in such matters.

Also, as per the policy, the government will fix the base price of land for auction. However there will be no outright sale of government land, as allocation will be made on 99 year lease.

“It will be wrong to say we are trying to maximise our revenue . There are certain riders for industrial projects. Also, if someone wants to set up school, hospital, we will specially consider those cases,” West Bengal Industry minister Partha Chatterjee said.

Trinamool Congress-led government is also firm on its publicly announced stand of no acquisition of land by the state for industrial projects.

For industry, the allotment of government land via auction, however may turn out to be yet another hindrance to investment.

“I have not seen the new land policy yet. Yes, auction is a transparent process. But there has to be a balance between cost of land and cost of the project. The cost of the project will go up in this process,”  Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci) president R V Kanoria, said.

Another city-industrialist, pointed out the government is unnecessarily making the issue complex. “We are hearing about the land bank for long. The government is yet to tell us how much land it has. I do no think it has a huge chunk of land at any location for any big-ticket manufacturing unit. Whatever, is there is MSME. If the land price escalates for industrial projects, even those will be badly hit.”