Farm land for industry should be avoided:Pranab Mukherjee

Kolkata, Mar 4 (UNI) Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee today called for a comprehensive national policy for proper acquisition of land for industry.

Speaking at a function to lay the foundation of the city's second IT park-Ecospace-at Rajarhat-New Town area here today, both Mr Chatterjee and Mr Mukherjee, however, made it clear that in order to ensure higher growth of Indian economy in a highly competitive global market, there was no way but to pursue industrialisation programmes more vigorously and in a time bound manner.

Without naming any political party, both the leaders flayed certain elements for creating 'unnecessary obstacles' in the path of industrial growth of West Bengal.

Referring to such partie's opposition against the acquisition of a ''small portion of farmland'' at Singur by the state government for the Tata Motors' proposed small car project, the Lok Sabha Speaker said it was very unfortunate that without providing any useful alternative proposals, some people were trying to stall the project.

In this connection Mr Chatterjee, echoing Mr Mukherjee's views, emphasised the need for formulating a comprehensive national policy on the issue of acquisition and proper distribution of farmland for the purpose of new industry to avoid any further collision on the matter with the opposition.

Referring to the inadequate allocation of funds by the Centre for the growth of agriculture duriong the last three subsequent plan periods, Mr Mukherjee said as a result the growth of agriculture in India had now been reduced to only about 2.2 per cent against the minimum requirement of 4.5 per cent per annum.

This has resulted in sky rocketing of prices of almost all essential commodities and brought to the fore the urgency of launching the country's second Green Revolution'', the External Affairs minister pointed out.

Both the leaders also hailed the stupendous growth in IT sector in West Bengal attracting all big names in the sector, to the state.

The completion of the second IT hub called 'Ecospace' here, within the next three years at a cost of Rs 450 crores, would not only open up a new window of opportunity for the country's burgeoming IT professionals but also place the state among the forerunners in overall industrialisation programmes.

Earlier speaking on the occasion Chairmen of Ambuja Reality and the Bangalore based RMZ Group Harshawardhan Neotia and Raj Menda,the promoters of Ecospace in their respective speeches elaborated the plans for the time bound project on 20 acres of land, owned by both the groups with equal stakes.

The first phase of the work was slated for completion by the end of next year providing job opportunities to about 20,000 IT professionals under one roof, they said adding atogether eight- ten storied towers would come up on the acquired land with a total floor space of more than 2.5 million square feet.

Among others West Bengal Housing and Public Engineering minister Gautam Deb was present.

UNI