By IANS
Kolkata : Buddha proposes, Mamata disposes. The fate of a proposed chemical hub in West Bengal continued to remain caught in a political slugfest with Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee Friday saying she would not allow any chemical hub in West Bengal till Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya meted out justice to the Nandigram victims.
“The blood stains of Nandigram are yet to dry and he (Buddhadeb Bhattacharya) is talking about a chemical hub. There would be no chemical hub, we won’t allow any hub till the state is cleaned of political pollution,” she said here.
She ruled out the possibility of Trinamool taking part in an all-party meeting on Sep 3 over the proposed chemical hub in Haldia.
On Wednesday, Bhattacharya called an all-party meeting on Sep 3 to find a consensus over the hub in an alternative location after the flare-up in Nandigram in East Midnapore district where it was originally planned.
In fact, faced with severe opposition over land acquisition, the state government has decided to scale down the area of the chemical hub in Haldia to 4,000 acres from 10,000 acres planned initially by expanding the existing facility.
“You may call it a chemical hub or a chemical zone or whatever you may like. I have no problem with nomenclature. We already have big names like Mitsubishi and Haldia Petrochemicals manufacturing chemical products there in an area spanning 6,000 acres and if we take up 4,000 acres of land, the total area covered will be 10,000 acres,” Bhattacharya said Wednesday.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Thursday said the Indian unit of Mitsubishi Chemical Corp (MCC), located in Haldia port town, about 125 km from here, would triple its production capacity for the purified terephthalic acid (PTA), a raw material for polyester, by 2009.
“Mitsubishi Chemical Corp (MCC) will would triple its capacity by 2009,” Abe said here at a function during his daylong visit to the city Thursday.
Bhattacharya said that a mother oil refinery and two ancillary units, including a polymer factory, would come up at Haldia after the expansion project.
Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd is a modern naphtha based Petrochemical Complex jointly promoted by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), The Chatterjee Petrochem (Mauritius) Co. Ltd. and the Tata Group with an investment of $1.2 Billion.
The proposed chemical hub as part of a special economic zone (SEZ) in collaboration with Salim group of Indonesia had triggered a bloodbath in West Midnapore’s Nandigram, about 150 km from here, since January, claiming at least 25 lives so far, including 14 deaths in a police firing on March 14 on villagers resisting entry of cops in the area.