By IANS,
Kolkata: The West Bengal government Wednesday requested Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee to hand over the excess railway land to the state government for developing small and medium-scale industries.
“We, on behalf of the department for state cottage and small-scale industries, sent a letter to Mamata Banerjee, requesting her to hand over the excess land of the railways to the state government. We are interested to set up small and medium-scale industries there,” state Cottage and Small-scale Industry Minister Manab Mukherjee told IANS.
“We can set up these projects on our own or we can also go for joint ventures with the railways if the union minister wants,” he said.
“We came to know from the newspapers that the railways minister is interested to use railway land for industrial purpose. So we wrote this letter asking her for the land,” Mukherjee added.
The minister said if the railways handed over the land to the Cottage and Small-scale Industry Department, it would help to create huge employment in the state.
Earlier this week, Banerjee had said at an event in Singur in Hooghly district that the railways had already identified 113,000 acres across the nation that can be used for developing industrial infrastructure.
She said six bighas of railway land in Singur would be used for setting up an industrial cluster under the Kisan Vision project, which will help local farmers sell their products from outlets on this land.
She said that the initiative would also create employment in Singur.