PM should convene all-party meet on SEZ: Venkaiah

New Delhi, Jan 23 (UNI) The BJP today renewed its appeal to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for the convening of an all-party meeting on the Special Economic Zone and demanded a white paper on the SEZ status in the country.

Senior BJP leader M Venkaiah Naidu, who headed the party committee on the SEZ issue, told newspersons that the party was for the implementation of SEZ to ensure a fair deal for farmers with adequate compensation.

He said irrigated and fertile land should not be given away to maintain a balance between the population growth and the agricultural production as pointed out by noted Agricultural Scientist Dr M S Swaminathan.

The BJP leader said there were instances when the SEZ status was granted in two days bypassing the objections of the state governments and this was a wrong approach. The SEZ conditions should be stringent to ensure that 60 per cent of the land acquired went to processing and manufacturing zone and the concessions offered on steel, cement and other construction materials should be limited to these zones.

Taking out IT industries from the SEZs would take away the lure. The government offering them tax incentives upto 2016 would solve most of SEZ problems, he said.

On Singur controversy, Mr Naidu, who had visited West Bengal, said the situation in the state was not good. The state government was claiming that the land had not been handed over to the Tatas, which was going ahead with the construction work.

The BJP, he said, had no objection to the CPI-M changing its tune on the industrial growth after having driven out the industries from West Bengal. ''But this kind of running the show was not good either for West Bengal or for the ruling party,'' he said.

UNI