Farm land for industry should be avoided: Pranab

Kolkata, Mar 04: Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee and ExternalAffairs minister Pranab Mukherjee today called for a comprehensivenational policy for proper and equal distribution of crop land forindustry.

Speaking at a function to lay the foundation of the city's secondIT park-Ecospace-at Rajarhat-New Town area here today, both MrChatterjee and Mr Mukherjee, however, made it clear that in order toensure higher growth of Indian economy in a highly competitive globalmarket, there was no way but to pursue industrialisation programmesmore vigorously and in a time bound manner.

Without naming any political party, particularly the TrinamoolCongress, both the leaders flayed them for creating 'unnecessaryobstacles' in the path of industrial growth of West Bengal.

Referring to their opposition against the acquisition of a smallportion of farmland at Singur by the state government for the TataMotors' proposed small car project, the Lok Sabha Speaker said it wasvery unfortunate that without providing any useful alternativeproposals 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 onthe issue of acquisition and proper distribution of farmland for thepurpose of new industry to avoid any further collision on the matterwith the opposition.

Referring to the inadequate allocation of funds by the Centre forthe growth of agriculture duriong the last three subsequent planperiods, Mr Mukherjee said as a result the growth of agriculture inIndia had now been reduced to only about 2.2 per cent against theminimum requirement of 4.5 per cent per annum.

This has resulted in sky rocketing of prices of almost allessential commodities and brought to the fore the urgency of launchingthe country's second Green Revolution", the External Affairs ministerpointed out.

Both the leaders also hailed the stupendous growth in IT sector inWest Bengal attracting all big names in the sector to the state. Withthe completion of the second IT hub called 'Ecospace' here within thenext three years at a cost of Rs 450 crores would not only opend up anew window of opportunity for the country's burgeoming IT professionalsbut also place the state among the forerunners in overallindustrialisation programmes.

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

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

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

UNI