No free land to RIL: Punjab CM

Jalandhar, June 2 (UNI) Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today said the state would not give any of its land holdings to Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) free of cost and that the RIL's proposal for agri-business in the state would be discussed at the next cabinet meet.

''The state cabinet is likely to clear the Reliance agro-project at its next meeting,'' he told reporters here.

He said the company would not buy any of the farmers' land but would have a contract with the farmers for its agri-business units.

''The group will only enter in contract with local farmers for conract farming,'' he added.

He said under the RIL's project, 52 rural agro-hubs and over 300 sub-hubs would be set up for undertaking agro processing and marketing activity.

The company would set up 22,000 rural super markets in the country of with 34 hyper supermarkets and 70 super markets to be opened in 33 towns of Punjab, Mr Singh said.

Over the protests and opposition to the state government's erstwhile proposal of land deal with the RIL, Mr Singh said he did not want to comment over utterances by his party colleague Jagmeet Brar.

As far as the Akali leaders were concerned, the chief minister said, they were in the habit of opposing every step taken by the government.

Mr Singh reiterated the government's resolve for abolition of octroi but expressed his inability in giving a time frame for the same.

He said the state government and the ruling Congress was committed to abolish octroi but it would be possible only when the government had additional funds to provide to the civic bodies to cover up the loss due to abolition of octroi.

''The octroi abolition will be announced as soon as the government found alternative source of income for civil bodies,'' he said.

The ruling Congress had promised abolition of octroi in its election manifesto during the last Assembly elections. Finance Minister Surinder Singhla had recently announced at a function that octroi would be abolished in the state from June.

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