Be it Posco, Tata Motors or ArcelorMittal, the travails of acquiring land for industrial purposes and sorting out issues related to rehabilitation and resettlement may have forced them to abandon their plans in states like West Bengal, Orissa and Karnataka in recent times. But there are exceptions. One such exception is the Sajjan Jindal-controlled JSW Steel, which has managed to not only successfully acquire over 4,300 acres of land in West Bengal but has also begin construction. The R35,000-crore project in Bengal?s Salboni region envisages not only a 10-million-tonne steel plant but also a 1,600 MW captive power plant.
JSW?s Bengal project, announced in 2007, required around 4,300 acres of land for setting up the plant. The company faced lot of hurdles initially, like allotment of shares to landowners, jobs for the family members of landowners and adequate compensation and rehabilitation. According to JSW officials, around 1,200 families were offered jobs. The average cost of buying the land was R3 lakh per acre.
The successful completion of land acquisition in the state has the paved the way for many others. This is a case where the Bengal government provided the required land for the project under the leadership of Trinamool Congress party supreme Mamata Banerjee, who earlier forced the Tatas to exit their Singur project.
Industry experts feels that such incidents underline the need for a rehabilitation and resettlement law to make the land buying process transparent.