West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has asked the Centre for its speedy approval for a deep-sea port near Haldia as Bangladesh is planning to set up one in Chittagong.
“I have read somewhere that Bangladesh had decided at the BIMSTEC meeting to have a deep-sea port in Chittagong,” Bhattacharjee said.
Bangladesh has been looking at capacity augmentation of the Chittagong port to handle traffic from territories in the hinterland. It has also taken into consideration the potential for establishing the port near Chittagong.
Bhattacharjee said, “I am meeting Pranab Mukherjee this week. If necessary, I will talk to the prime minister. The state has already prepared the project and is waiting for the approval of the shipping ministry.”
“I will tell Mukherjee that the deep-sea port is very important for us to take the Look East Policy forward,” he said.
Bhattacharjee, present at the national executive committee meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry on Wednesday, said the state needs to be very careful when dealing with land acquisitions.
“We have to move cautiously and have to formulate a proper land acquisition and rehabilitation policy. We have to formulate it in our own way,” he said.
“The Centre placed a draft land acquisition policy before a parliamentary standing committee, which has discussed and finalised it,” Bhattacharjee said.
According to him, the state has 1.35 crore hectares of agricultural land. “If we implement all proposals in hand, we will need 1 lakh acres, which is only a very small portion of the total,” he said.
