Maharashtra bows to local opposition, scraps four SEZ projects

Buckling under intense pressure from farmers and local villagers, the state-run Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) has withdrawn its proposals for four joint venture SEZs (special economic zones).

The ventures were to be with Indiabulls at Ranjankhar in Raigad district on over 1,936 hectare of land, with Mahindra and Mahindra on an over 3,000-hectare plot in Karla, Pune district, and two projects jointly with Videocon at Wagholi, Pune, on a 1,000-hactare plot, and on over 2,736 hectare of land at Gandheli, Aurangabad district.

At a meeting with minister for industries Narayan Rane, the MIDC moved a proposal to cancel the projects on the grounds that it had failed to acquire land for any of the four proposed SEZs.

According to sources, after Rane heard the reasons put forth by MIDC officials on the opposition from affected farmers and locals, he agreed to cancel the proposed projects.

“The plots of land to be acquired are cultivable and are multi-crop farms. Further, there was intense opposition from the local people, including non-farmers, which even led the police to fire on protesting locals to break them up,” said a source close to Rane.

The projects were proposed in 2008, but they ran into opposition immediately from affected farmers and other local villagers who were vehemently opposed to having their homes and farms taken away for the proposed SEZs. “The opposition was so intense that government officials who went to the villages to survey the land to be acquired were hounded and chased away. After some point, no government official could even enter the villages,” said the source.

The local opposition to the SEZ projects got a boost after the central government proposed amending the rules regarding the acquisition of land following the fiasco at Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal. One of the central government guidelines suggested that multi-crop land must not be acquired for projects, which effectively stymied the MIDC’s proposed joint venture SEZ projects.

The MIDC’s admission of failure to acquire land for the proposed SEZ comes just days after Union agriculture minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar voiced his opposition to the central government’s proposed land acquisition policy, which sought to do away with the role of the state government in acquiring land, suggesting that any deal could instead be struck between the seller and the buyer. The new policy also suggested hiking the acquiring rate to Rs20 crore per hectare. Pawar had said such policies would sound the death knell for Maharashtra’s industrialisation, and the high costs would make any new project unviable.

Several SEZ projects in the state have run aground due to non-acquisition of land.