'No further land acquisition without consultation'

Kolkata, Apr 10: West Bengal Industries Minister Nirupam Sen today reiterated that the government would not acquire any farm land for industry without consulting and receiving approval from the concerned farmers.

''After the recent unfortunate incident at Nandigram, we have been trying to make it clear to the people time and again that there will be no further acquisition of farmland untill they agree to it for the sake of industrial growth in the locality,'' Mr Sen told newsmen after participating in the Annual General Meeting(AGM) of the Confederation of Indian Industry(CII),Eastern Regional Council, here.

But whether this ''sudden change'' in policy would in anyway hamper the present growth of industry in the state, Mr Sen said, on the contrary, this would ensure a sustainable and balanced growth and blamed the opposition for allegedly spreading the canards against it.

Earlier inaugurating the AGM, Mr Sen presented a clear picture about the state government's new stand on the issue of industrial growth and made it clear that under no circumstances it would be reverted back to the ''pre-industrialisation'' era under the opposition rule.

Quoting from the latest government figures indicating that the state had achieved unprecedented success in the growth of agriculture and several agro-based industries during the last few years, Mr Sen said since manufacturing and service sectors had now become the main focusssed areas of the government,they required huge chunks of land for setting up new plants.

Claiming that only about ten per cent of the total 998 acres of land required for the Tata Motors car plant at Singur was crop land, Mr Sen said the amount of compensation paid to the affected farmers was among the highest in the country. ''It was the wrong interpretation of the opposition parties that had created some confusion among a small section of farmers, which by now had been totally erased,'' he observed.

Regretting that some communication gap had led to the present situation at Nandigram which the government had now realised, Mr Sen said as a result they had now decided to take it up even at the grass root level to convince the public about the importance of industrialisation for generation of huge employment opportunities for all and sundry.

Among others, Executive Director, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, Naveen Kishore and the outgoing president of CII, B L Raina were present.

UNI