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Journalism of Courage
Developers of over a 100 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) are in for some bad news with the Centre deciding to drop their proposed zones that have already got in-principle approval from the Board of Approvals (BoA). The reason: the state governments concerned have been working on formalities that they need to complete before the BoA can grant these proposals a final approval.
Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior Commerce Ministry official said: “We are in the process of sending communiqués to the developers concerned to inform them that the proposals are no longer being considered by the Centre, as the state governments are yet to complete the formalities required.”
The Ministry had recently issued a directive that said SEZs for which state governments did not complete formalities within two months of getting in-principle approval from the Centre, would be dropped. “We can’t keep waiting indefinitely. These SEZs got in-principle approval eight to 10 months ago. If the states are not doing the needful, we cannot keep them in our ‘pending’ list forever,” the official said.
Part of the problem for some of these zones may be on account of land acquisition. The empowered Group of Ministers on SEZs — headed by Union External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee — had taken a decision in April to limit compulsory acquisition of land by state governments to 10 per cent of the proposed SEZ area.
A Group of Ministers, set up at the behest of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to thrash out a National Relief and Rehabilitation policy for those displaced by development projects and amendments in the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, has decided that states may be allowed to help procure 30 per cent of the land required for a project.
However, as the Cabinet recently deferred taking a decision on the proposals, states are unable to help developers facing acquisition problems beyond 10 percent of the area.
