MP not on Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor route

New Delhi, Feb 29 (UNI) Madhya Pradesh has not been included in the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), which is all set to start rolling this year with the allocation of Rs 50 crore to DMIC Development Corporation in the union Budget for 2008-09 tabled in Parliament today.

While announcing the project last year, Commerce and Industry Ministry Kamal Nath, who represents Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency of Madhya Pradesh, had said the corridor would be realigned to pass through MP.

But the Budget document said the 1,483-km corridor, aimed at upgrading industrial infrastructure of Delhi-Mumbai region, will pass through six states of Uttar Pradesh, Delhi-NCR, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra as originally conceived. All the states would be made stake holders in the project.

The planned budgetary support for the prestigious project, entailing an investment of 45-50 billion dollars, has been hiked ten times to Rs 50 crore from just Rs five crore in the current fiscal.

Japan would be involved in the project in a major way and help finance part of it through grants and by facilitating Japanese private sector participation in the project expected to be built over a seven-year period.

The corridor will have a 4,000-MW power plant, three greenfield ports and six airports. It would also link 10 cities with more than 10 lakh population -- Faridabad, Surat, Delhi, Greater Mumbai, Meerut, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Pune and Nashik.

The industrial corridor has been planned along major transport arteries such as highways, passenger train connectivity and rail freight corridors connecting to ports to facilitate imports and exports.

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