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By Nantoo Banerjee
The West Bengal authorities’s newest determination to take over 395 acres of prime industrial land mendacity idle at Uttarpara, close to Kolkata, below CK Birla-controlled Hindustan Motors Restricted (HM), for gainful use is most welcome. The large HM manufacturing facility has been closed since 2014. It could be excessive time that the state, starved of excellent industrial land, additionally takes over lands held by a number of such closed models, together with GKW, Dunlop and Steel Field, that are mendacity idle for years.
The lengthy unutilised industrial lands could also be handed over to keen entrepreneurs of reputation to make sure their correct use. It’ll assist elevate the state’s industrial manufacturing, employment and authorities income. Different states must also take related steps to unlock their unproductive industrial lands abandoned by loss-making entrepreneurs and provides them to keen buyers to start out enterprises or use them for enlargement of their current manufacturing amenities. In reality, there are literally thousands of massive, medium and small-sized closed models throughout the nation sitting on lakhs of acres of land procured virtually for a tune with help from state industrial improvement firms or state governments.
HM’s Uttarpara complicated was arrange in 1948 after the Birla firm shifted its base from Gujarat. The large complicated by the Grand Trunk Street, one in every of Asia’s oldest and longest (2,400 km) street arteries, and the river Hooghly, is among the many nation’s most engaging industrial places. It housed India’s first and solely built-in vehicle plant that additionally manufactured automotive and cast elements. The plant produced Ambassador automobiles (1500 and 2000 cc diesel, 1800 cc petrol, CNG and LPG variants) and light-weight industrial automobiles with one-tonne payload mini-truck Winner (2000 cc diesel and CNG). It had amenities corresponding to press store, forge store, foundry, machine store, mixture meeting models for engines, axles and many others and a R&D wing. It produced the long-lasting passenger automotive Ambassador, the nation’s No.1 automotive model for practically half a century till Maruti-Suzuki arrange its first plant at Haryana and have become the most important passenger car maker by the tip of the final century.
Ideally, the West Bengal authorities ought to invite massive vehicle manufactures corresponding to Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motors, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Kia Motors, Toyota Kirloskar, Skoda Auto, Honda Vehicles and Renault to take a look on the Uttarpara website and decide up any one in every of them keen to arrange a manufacturing or meeting unit there. West Bengal is the one main industrial state, which doesn’t have an vehicle manufacturing unit for the current. Nonetheless thought to be an industrial energy home of Japanese India, a brand new technology vehicle manufacturing facility will vastly enhance Bengal’s picture other than producing a very good variety of jobs, instantly or not directly. Globally, vehicle manufacturing is thought to be an engine of development. Presently, Kolkata ranks ninth in annual passenger automotive gross sales, slightly below Chennai, which accounts for 30 p.c of your entire nation’s automotive manufacturing exercise. Usually, any vehicle producer want to have a base in Bengal. This explains why the Tatas have been eager to arrange a plant in Bengal in 2010. Curiously, nationwide automotive gross sales had crushed all bumps to develop 27 p.c final yr. A file variety of 3.8 million passenger automobiles and industrial automobiles have been bought in India in 2021.
Coming again to the problem of lakhs of acres of idle industrial land held by closed models within the nation and the necessity for unlocking these priceless immovable belongings, each state authorities ought to discover methods to take over such lands and hand them over to keen industrial buyers. A number of states are confronted with the issue of commercial closure. Even the industrially quick rising Gujarat is just not out of the ambit. Within the state authorities’s personal admission, 1,500 industrial models are shut down within the Gujarat Industrial Improvement Company (GIDC) estates alone. The economic models in numerous estates in 21 Gujarat districts have been shut because of “lack of demand and monetary points”, amongst different causes, the state authorities stated in written replies to questions from completely different MLAs throughout the earlier Meeting session.
In a few of the states, industrial models are additionally pressured to close down for repeatedly flouting the air pollution management norms. In Maharashtra, as many as 834 factories have been closed below the orders of the Maharashtra Air pollution Management Board (MPCB). All of them have been situated in Maharashtra Industrial Improvement Company (MIDC) estates. These closed factories — principally chemical or pharmaceutical models — included 49 in Pune, 380 in Ulhasnagar, 170 in Ambernath and Dombivli, 81 in Tarapur, 23 in Chiplun, seven in Taloja, and eight in Patalganga, Roha and Mahad every.
As well as, there are a number of medium and enormous models mendacity closed in Maharashtra, the nation’s No.1 industrial state. It could be time to take inventory of the land areas mendacity idle for greater than 5 years because of closure of those factories. In West Bengal, the state’s atmosphere division revealed that 21,521 industrial models had shut down between 2016 and 2021. The very best variety of industrial closures within the state was reported in South 24 Parganas adopted by North 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Kolkata, Murshidabad, and Jalpaiguri.
In reality, the variety of closed corporations within the nation accounts for a whopping 36.07 p.c of the overall of practically 19 lakh corporations that have been registered below the Registrar of Corporations. variety of them are usually not manufacturing corporations. Out of the overall 6,83,317 corporations which were shut down, over 1.42 lakh are in Maharashtra, greater than 1.25 lakh are in Delhi, over 67,000 in West Bengal. Responding to a Lok Sabha question, Finance and Company Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had stated the federal government has undertaken a particular drive for identification and placing off of the registered corporations which haven’t filed their monetary statements or annual returns in two previous monetary years. Nonetheless, a mere deregistration of corporations might not remedy the issue of idle lands below their occupation.
Greater than industrial closure, each the central and state governments ought to be involved concerning the destiny of the land plenty occupied by the closed models, large or small. That is necessary since new factories are more and more grabbing fertile farm lands at the price of agricultural manufacturing in a rustic which must feed its 1.4-billion-plus inhabitants around the yr. Whereas many of the agricultural land will be simply transformed for industrial use, the reverse would look like tough, if not not possible, because the destiny of the Tata Motors-surrendered farm land at Singur within the Hooghly district carrying industrial constructions confirmed. If needed, legal guidelines ought to be enacted by the centre and state governments to legally pay money for all idle industrial lands occupied by closed models or held by entrepreneurs who’ve failed to make use of the land belongings inside a time period. Idle industrial lands held by closed models are a nationwide waste. (IPA Service)
The put up It’s Time To Unlock Lands Held By Closed Industrial Items first appeared on IPA Newspack.
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