Pune SEZ may bite the dust

NCP leaders claim Sharad Pawar will pronounce verdict on November 6

PUNE: Has the Videocon group’s plans for a special economic zone (SEZ) near Pune run aground? Local workers of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) think so. They claim their party leader and union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar will ensure the project is either scrapped or shifted following the protests by farmers of four major villages — Wagholi, Lonikand, Bakori and Kesnand —against giving up their land. The proposed SEZ is to come up on 2009 hectares.

According to Vilas Lande, a local MLA, “Pawar saheb has already issued instructions to VK Jairath, industries secretary, to initiate the process of reversing the process of land acquisition that the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) had initiated by issuing chapter 6 notices to the farmers.”

The sarpanch of Lonikand, Adinath Anandrao Kand, told DNA: “Farmers from all the four villages are opposed to the SEZ in general and land acquisition in particular. In fact, villagers were so agitated that when some men of Videocon company had come to our village with MIDC officers, villagers beat them up badly. However, after Pawarsaheb’s clear instructions to MIDC, we are sure that the project will be scrapped and the announcement to this effect will be made on November 6.”

Equally intense are the feelings of farmers at Wagholi village. Upsarpanch of Wagholi, Vasant Jadhavrao told DNA, “People don’t want to give even an inch of their land to Videocon. Market rate for the land has gone beyond Rs1 crore per acre! Why should anybody give land to Videocon?”  

However, the state industries department is tight-lipped. Jairath, the MIDC CEO Rajiv Jalota, and its Pune Regional Officer, P Jadhav all gave a stock reply: “Since the matter has become extremely politically sensitive, we in government have taken a decision not to make any comment about this project until we take a decision otherwise.”

However, a very senior bureaucrat in the department told DNA, on condition of anonymity, that “It is true that Pawar has asked the department to reverse the process of land acquisition. But the problem before the administration is how to do it. There are three options – one that Videocon should announce that it does not want to set up the SEZ which it will not. Second that MIDC should say that it is unable to acquire the land for the project for which it simply does not have any ground. The third option is that government of Maharashtra should announce scrapping or shifting of the project.”

Jairath’s problem is, the officer said, that he does not have solid ground to scrap or shift the project and that is why “he has no comment to offer.”

Videocon CEO Venugopal Dhoot, told DNA that “I just do not want to talk anything about this issue.”

Meanwhile NCP workers have started the preparations for a public meeting on the grounds of a Zilla Parishad school in Lonikand on November 6 at which Pawar is expected to announce the SEZ’s fate.

So far 560 proposals for setting up SEZs in different parts of the country have either been given final or in-principle approval by the union commerce ministry, 121 of them in Maharashtra alone. And despite violent protests in many parts of the country, no SEZ has been scrapped or shifted so far.