No land for Videocon SEZ: Pawar

MUMBAI: Sharad Pawar, NCP chief and Union agriculture minister, on Tuesday announced that the government would not acquire even one acre of land for the proposed special economic zone (SEZ) of Videocon on the outskirts of Pune. DNA had indicated as much in its November 6 edition.

A direct fallout of this announcement is that the Videocon group’s proposed SEZ may now have to be scrapped. Approximately 2,009 hectares of land were supposed to be acquired for the SEZ covering four villages of Pune district.

This is one of those rare instances where an SEZ may be scrapped because the government declined to acquire land.
Pawar said “the decision is in conformity with the decision taken by the Central group of ministers that government agencies will not acquire land for projects of private parties that do not involve (an) infrastructural development component.”

The state government has already taken a policy decision to suspend the process of acquiring land for Videocon’s SEZ.