It’s Time To Unlock Lands Held By Closed Industrial Units

By Nantoo Banerjee

The West Bengal authorities’s newest determination to take over 395 acres of prime industrial land mendacity idle at Uttarpara, close to Kolkata, below CK Birla-controlled Hindustan Motors Restricted (HM), for gainful use is most welcome. The large HM manufacturing facility has been closed since 2014. It could be excessive time that the state, starved of excellent industrial land, additionally takes over lands held by a number of such closed models, together with GKW, Dunlop and Steel Field, that are mendacity idle for years.

The lengthy unutilised industrial lands could also be handed over to keen entrepreneurs of reputation to make sure their correct use. It’ll assist elevate the state’s industrial manufacturing, employment and authorities income. Different states must also take comparable steps to unlock their unproductive industrial lands abandoned by loss-making entrepreneurs and provides them to keen traders to start out enterprises or use them for enlargement of their current manufacturing amenities. In actual fact, there are literally thousands of giant, medium and small-sized closed models throughout the nation sitting on lakhs of acres of land procured virtually for a tune with help from state industrial growth firms or state governments.

HM’s Uttarpara complicated was arrange in 1948 after the Birla firm shifted its base from Gujarat. The large complicated by the Grand Trunk Highway, considered one of Asia’s oldest and longest (2,400 km) highway arteries, and the river Hooghly, is among the many nation’s most tasty industrial places. It housed India’s first and solely built-in car plant that additionally manufactured automotive and solid parts. The plant produced Ambassador automobiles (1500 and 2000 cc diesel, 1800 cc petrol, CNG and LPG variants) and lightweight business automobiles with one-tonne payload mini-truck Winner (2000 cc diesel and CNG). It had amenities comparable to press store, forge store, foundry, machine store, combination meeting models for engines, axles and so on and a R&D wing. It produced the long-lasting passenger automobile Ambassador, the nation’s No.1 automobile model for almost half a century till Maruti-Suzuki arrange its first plant at Haryana and have become the largest passenger car maker by the tip of the final century.

Ideally, the West Bengal authorities ought to invite giant car manufactures comparable to Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai Motors, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Kia Motors, Toyota Kirloskar, Skoda Auto, Honda Vehicles and Renault to take a look on the Uttarpara web site and choose up any considered one of them keen to arrange a manufacturing or meeting unit there. West Bengal is the one main industrial state, which doesn’t have an car manufacturing unit for the current. Nonetheless thought to be an industrial energy home of Japanese India, a brand new technology car manufacturing facility will vastly enhance Bengal’s picture other than producing a superb variety of jobs, straight or not directly. Globally, car manufacturing is thought to be an engine of development. At the moment, Kolkata ranks ninth in annual passenger automobile gross sales, just under Chennai, which  accounts for 30 % of the whole nation’s automobile manufacturing exercise. Usually, any car producer want to have a base in Bengal. This explains why the Tatas had been eager to arrange a plant in Bengal in 2010. Apparently, nationwide automobile gross sales had crushed all bumps to develop 27 % final 12 months. A file variety of 3.8 million passenger automobiles and business automobiles had been offered in India in 2021.

Coming again to the problem of lakhs of acres of idle industrial land held by closed models within the nation and the necessity for unlocking these priceless immovable belongings, each state authorities ought to discover methods to take over such lands and hand them over to keen industrial traders. A number of states are confronted with the issue of commercial closure. Even the industrially quick rising Gujarat shouldn’t be out of the ambit. Within the state authorities’s personal admission, 1,500 industrial models are shut down within the Gujarat Industrial Improvement Company (GIDC) estates alone. The economic models in several estates in 21 Gujarat districts had been shut on account of “lack of demand and monetary points”, amongst different causes, the state authorities mentioned in written replies to questions from completely different MLAs in the course of the earlier Meeting session.

In among the states, industrial models are additionally compelled to close down for repeatedly flouting the air pollution management norms. In Maharashtra, as many as 834 factories have been closed below the orders of the Maharashtra Air pollution Management Board (MPCB). All of them had been situated in Maharashtra Industrial Improvement Company (MIDC) estates. These closed factories — largely chemical or pharmaceutical models — included 49 in Pune, 380 in Ulhasnagar, 170 in Ambernath and Dombivli, 81 in Tarapur, 23 in Chiplun, seven in Taloja, and eight in Patalganga, Roha and Mahad every.

As well as, there are a number of medium and enormous models mendacity closed in Maharashtra, the nation’s No.1 industrial state. It could be time to take inventory of the land areas mendacity idle for greater than 5 years on account of closure of those factories.  In West Bengal, the state’s surroundings division revealed that 21,521 industrial models had shut down between 2016 and 2021. The best variety of industrial closures within the state was reported in South 24 Parganas adopted by North 24 Parganas, East Midnapore, Kolkata, Murshidabad, and Jalpaiguri.

In actual fact, the variety of closed corporations within the nation accounts for a whopping 36.07 % of the overall of almost 19 lakh companies that had been registered below the Registrar of Corporations. A superb variety of them aren’t manufacturing companies. Out of the overall 6,83,317 corporations which were shut down, over 1.42 lakh are in Maharashtra, greater than 1.25 lakh are in Delhi, over 67,000 in West Bengal. Responding to a Lok Sabha question, Finance and Company Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had mentioned the federal government has undertaken a particular drive for identification and hanging off of the registered corporations which haven’t filed their monetary statements or annual returns in two previous monetary years. Nevertheless, a mere deregistration of corporations could not clear up the issue of idle lands below their occupation.

Greater than industrial closure, each the central and state governments ought to be involved in regards to the destiny of the land lots occupied by the closed models, huge or small. That is essential since new factories are more and more grabbing fertile farm lands at the price of agricultural manufacturing in a rustic which must feed its 1.4-billion-plus inhabitants around the 12 months. Whereas many of the agricultural land may be simply transformed for industrial use, the reverse would look like tough, if not not possible, because the destiny of the Tata Motors-surrendered farm land at Singur within the Hooghly district carrying industrial buildings confirmed. If vital, legal guidelines ought to be enacted by the centre and state governments to legally pay money for all idle industrial lands occupied by closed models or held by entrepreneurs who’ve failed to make use of the land belongings inside a time frame. Idle industrial lands held by closed models are a nationwide waste.  (IPA Service)

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