Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) will acquire 4% equity in the prestigious Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project being established by the Government of India in collaboration with the Japanese government.

The decision has been taken in response to the letter sent by the Union ministry of commerce and industry wherein Haryana government was requested to participate in the equity of the newly formed Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMIC DC) for dedicated implementation of this project.

The state government has approved the participation of HSIIDC in the equity of the SPV to the tune of Rs 40 lakh. The managing director of HSIIDC has been nominated as special representative of the state government on the board of directors of DMIC DC.

Managing director of the corporation, Rajeev Arora informed that a memorandum of understanding (MoU) would be signed between HSIIDC and DMIC DC shortly. The draft of this MoU had already been approved by the state government. Elaborating the concept of DMIC DC, Arora informed that the Central was establishing a dedicated freight corridor between Delhi and Mumbai, with terminals at Dadri in the National capital region of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai.

The corridor conferring a length of around 1,500 kilometers would pass through the states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra. The dedicated Freight Corridor was expected to offer high-speed connectivity for high axle load wagons through high power locomotives.

In order to tap the immense opportunities likely to be thrown open by the corridor, a band of 150 to 200 kilometers around its both sides was being developed as the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). The vision for the development of DMIC was to create base in this band with globally competitive environment and state-of-the-art infrastructure to activate regional commerce and enhance foreign investments. The DMIC project would be developed in phases, with phase I to be implemented by 2012 and phase II by 2016.

He said as a strategy towards development of the project, nodes had been identified within the corridor as Investment Regions (IRs),with minimum area of 200 square kilometers and Industrial Area (IAs), with minimum area of 100 square kilometers.

These regions and areas would include self-sustained industrial townships with world-class infrastructure served by multi-modal connectivity for freight movement and logistic hubs, domestic and international air connectivity, reliable power, quality social infrastructure and globally competitive environment.

The DMIC project also augurs well for Haryana, as it would open up vast opportunities along the various natural highways (NH-1, NH-2, NH-8 & NH-10) for developing industrial, urban and supporting infrastructure in the state.

Apart from this, the state government had identified a few viable stand-alone projects from development as model initiatives and to capitalize on the existing potential. These projects, to be developed under the public private partnership model and christened Early Bird Projects would include a Regional Mass Rapid Transport Service (MRTS) between Delhi-Manesar-Bawal with feeder service to enhance connectivity between Delhi and up coming manufacturing hubs and a joint venture project around Dharuhera. In addition to above, a logistic Hub at IMT Manesar and new passenger rail links at Palwal-Rewari via Bhiwadi, Farrukhnagar-Jhajjar would also form as part of DMIC. These projects had been communicated to the ministry of commerce and industry for inclusion in the request for proposal (RFP) for conducting the feasibility studies.

The project development activities for identification, feasibility studies and project preparation, bid process management and final selection of private partner for these projects, were expected to be completed by March2009.