Farmers’ protests push SEZ back to drawing board

NANDA KASABE & GEETA NAIR
Posted online: Friday, March 23, 2007 at 0033 hours IST




PUNE, MAR 22 : The ambitious multi-product SEZ proposed by Bharat Forge
Ltd (BFL), is under reconsideration with the massive protests registered
by farmers in the proposed SEZ in the Khed taluka, including the
Mahindra SEZ at Karla in Maval taluka.
Statements issued by Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi, has also
led to the project being placed on the drawing boards and and a
reconsideration of the SEZ's boundary. This is likely to be a roadmap
for all the other SEZs coming up in Pune where agricultural land was
involved.

A

The state government, however, has denied the reconsideration being
influenced by the violence at Nandigram. "We are in discussions with
farmers for over two months, and have decided that agricultural lands
under irrigation would not be acquired for SEZs. Instead, the government
would focus on fist obtaining consent from the farmers. We want to make
the farmers, the stakeholders in these projects," said Pune collector
Prabhakar Deshmukh.

Originally the BFL SEZ was meant to be 6,850 hectare and is likely be
shrunk to 4,500 hectare, Deshmukh added. In the first phase, 454 hectare
of agricultural land was denotified from three villages. There are 13
more villages that are to be surveyed and this would lead to a further
reduction of the size of the SEZ. "BFL has been kept in the know and
they have agreed to the whole issue. There is no problem from their
side," Deshmukh said. "We intend to apply the same formula in the
Mahindra SEZs coming up in Karla and in Wagholi," he explained.

BFL had signed an MoU with the Maharashtra government in August 2006 to
jointly develop the multi-product SEZ. The SEZ was expected to attract
investment of about Rs 25,000 crore and generate 1,20,000 new employment
opportunities. The project would be implemented through a special
purpose vehicle (SPV) to be jointly promoted by the BFL-Kalyani group
and the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), in which
the two promoters would hold up to 74% and 26% of the equity capital,
respectively.

On July 11, 2006, thousands of farmers staged a protest at Rajgurunagar
Khed Tehsil office opposing acquisition of agricultural land for the
project and had presented a memorandum to the local tehsildar demanding
scrapping of the SEZ. Medha Patkar joined their campaign in October 2006
and marched to the Pune district collector's office.

BFL has taken these changes in its stride as was indicated by BFL
chairman, Baba Kalyani recently. He said the land acquisition process
would take its own time and he could not say when the project would
take-off.

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=158768