KOLKATA: The maiden BJP government in West Bengal plans to get back the bulk of the 4,102 acres of land of the JSW Steel plant at Salboni in Paschim Medinipur, promoted by industrialist Sajjan Jindal, to set up an industrial park.
The move was initiated after the state industries and commerce department minister, Tapas Roy, held a meeting with JSW officials in the presence of Vandana Yadav, additional chief secretary of the department and managing director of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), to discuss issues related to resumption of unused land from JSW Bengal Steel Limited.
The WBIDC, along with the Land and Land Reform Department, may visit the Salboni site to take stock of the unused land.
Yadav refused to comment on the issue when TNIE contacted her on Sunday seeking her comments.
Sources in the state industries and commerce department, requesting anonymity, said, “With the change in guard of power in Bengal, the state government is flooded with requests for allotment of industrial land from many investors for various projects, but we can’t provide them suitable plots. A huge bulk of land at the Salboni site has been lying unused for years.”
“As per the norms, transfer of land for a different purpose from that of the originally conceived project is a deviation. In addition to this, keeping the land idle for 15 years is a sufficient ground for resumption of land by the state government, particularly at a time when it desperately wants industrial investments for employment,” sources said.
Earlier in 2023, the former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while speaking at a public rally in Salboni, had said the Jindals would give back a chunk of the plot that lies unutilised and a new industry would come up there.
“Once, there was nothing in Salboni. The Left Front government allotted land and fled. I came to power in 2011 and inaugurated the Jindal group’s factory. Now I have another piece of good news for you. The Jindal group will return the stretch of land that they had taken from the government but did not use for industrial purposes. We would set up a new industry on that stretch. Salboni will get a new big industry soon,” Mamata had said at the rally.
Then Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in the Left regime had leased out 4,101 acres of land at Salboni in 2006 to JSW Bengal Steel, a subsidiary of JSW Steel — India’s largest domestic steelmaker, for a 10 million tonne per annum (MTPA) integrated steel plant.
However, a cocktail of events, especially the Jindals’ inability to secure iron ore linkage from the neighbouring Odisha and the cancellation of coal blocks by the Supreme Court in 2014, led them to eventually shelve the project.
The political violence led by the Maoists in the run-up to the Assembly elections in 2011 did not exude confidence among the investors either.
Later in 2015, JSW Cement, a company belonging to the $22-billion JSW Group, announced setting up a cement grinding unit of 3.8 MTPA capacity.
Equipped with a captive power plant, railway siding, housing for employees and a helipad, the cement unit is now operational and spread across 400-500 acres.
Sources at the JSW Group, whose portfolio of businesses includes steel, cement, power, infrastructure and paint among others, also proposed to set up two thermal power plants of 800 MW on a plot at the site.
According to the Central Electricity Authority (CTA), per MW requires 0.61 acres of land. The two proposed projects require hardly 1008 acres, as per the CTA. The plot is now protected with a 34 km boundary wall and is levelled.