Many industrial corridor projects are yet to take off due to various impediments including land acquisition and finance.
Initially, the government wanted the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce to include only the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) for the study as it had witnessed the maximum progress in work compared to the other projects. However, the panel decided to undertake an indepth study of all the problems affecting all industrial corridors official sources told The Hindu.
Report before Budget Session
Significantly, this also include Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC) which covers Varanasi, the Parliamentary constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, where work has hardly begun, they said. Panel Chairman and BJP MP, Chandan Mitra, told The Hindu that the committee will visit Amritsar, Mumbai and Bangalore between January 28 and February second, and then cover Varanasi, Lucknow and Kolkata from February 14 to 18.
Other important corridor sites will also be covered and the panel intends to submit a comprehensive report -- to be titled ‘Growth and Development of Industrial Corridors in India’ -- before the end of the forthcoming Budget Session of Parliament (on May 8), he said.
“Land acquisition is a sensitive issue, and there will always be people who go to court challenging it and the compensation. But I don’t expect the kind of trouble we saw in Singur (in West Bengal over land acquisition). States are negotiating with farmers and people are coming forward as the corridors are to bring benefits including jobs and lead to greater investment, manufacturing and exports,” Mr. Mitra said.
Besides DMIC and AKIC, the other proposed corridors are Bengaluru- Mumbai Economic Corridor (BMEC), Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC) and Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC or the East Coast Economic Corridor).
AKIC covers Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal, while DMIC spans Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra.BMEC covers Karnataka and Maharashtra. CBIC includes Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, whereas VCIC covers Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
Official sources said the panel will look into all issues concerning these corridors including land acquisition, infrastructure development and financial aspects including loans from banks, financial institutions and multi-lateral/regional agencies such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). The development of these corridors is also being monitored by the Prime Minister’s Office and the Cabinet Secretariat, the sources said.
As regards DMIC, eight nodes have been identified in six states under the first phase by the DMIC Development Corporation (DMICDC), the commerce and industry ministry said.
The master plans for these nodes except for one each in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have been completed and accepted by the states.
Land acquisition problems
However, the ministry said one of the main impediments was land availability. Land acquisition was a time-consuming and cumbersome process requiring huge financial resources.
Besides, the institutional framework for formation of node/city-level Special Purpose Vehicles (SPV) for implementation of DMIC project has also been a time consuming process, needing amendment of existing laws / passing new laws for delegating powers of planning and development to node/city level SPVs and facilitate notification of the proposed investment regions / industrial areas under the DMIC, it said. State-level meetings are being held to expedite these issues, the ministry said.
On CBIC, the ministry said the nodal agency JICA has completed a comprehensive regional perspective planning and master planning completed, and three nodes have been identified for master planning. Regarding VCIC, the ADB has completed a conceptual development plan report and two nodes have been identified for master planning. The AKIC feasibility study is under progress.
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