By IANS,
Kolkata : Certain laws in West Bengal will hinder acquisition of a big chunk of land directly by industrialists and these need to be reviewed, industry chamber FICCI said Friday.
“There are certain laws in West Bengal which hinder industrialists from buying a large chunk of land for industry directly from land owners. There will be legal hurdles. Laws like Urban Land Ceiling Act state that industrialists cannot acquire more than 23 acres of land. Government permission is needed for that,” FICCI’s Eastern Regional Council chairman Gaurav Swarup told reporters here.
Laws like Urban Land Ceiling Act and Land Reform Act should be reviewed, he said.
“Many states reviewed those acts, but West Bengal did not,” he said.
A two-member expert committee, constituted by the state government, recommended that the government will have no role to play in land acquisition for private industry and industrialists will have to acquire land directly from land owners.
FICCI has already set up a task force for land acquisition in West Bengal.
“The task force will review the bottlenecks in the state for land acquisition,” FICCI president Harsh Mariwala said, adding providing quality infrastructure was the need of the hour in West Bengal.
“Infrastructure development could be best done in the context of National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZ) as proposed under the National Manufacturing Policy. National Manufacturing Policy provides for development of NIMZs which would be in the minimum area of 5000 hectares,” he said.
“State government will be responsible for selection of such land for NIMZ,” he added.
Only the service sector could not generate huge employment in the state and growth of manufacturing sector was necessary for this purpose, said FICCI secretary general Rajiv Kumar.
“Energy and skill are the two major issues for industrialisation,” he added.
West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra quit as FICCI secretary general ahead of the April-May assembly that swept the Trinamool Congress-Congress to power after more than three decades of Left rule.