Kolkata, September 07: The West Bengal government on Monday scrapped plans to build a $1-billion IT hub citing land acquisition problems, another setback to the state’s struggle to industrialise.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had planned an IT town on the outskirts of Kolkata to host IT giants Wipro and Infosys.
But the state government cancelled the project after local police arrested a member of a private business consortium, which had offered to procure land for the IT hub on behalf of the government, on charges of seizing the land by force.
“It is impossible for the IT department to proceed with the project,” the state’s IT ministry said in a statement. “The government does not want to be involved in any illegal activity.”
Land acquisition is a sensitive issue in the state where a rural backlash against government takeovers of private land for industry resulted in the communists’ worst showing in decades in the April-May general election.
The communists, who quit the ruling Congress-led coalition at the centre last year, have governed West Bengal since 1977.
West Bengal was hit by the high-profile exit of carmaker Tata Motors last year, when violent farmer protests prompted Tata to shift a plant to produce the world’s cheapest car out of the state.
Protests against land acquisition highlight a broader standoff between industry and farmers unwilling to give up land in a country where the majority of the population lives on agriculture.
—Agencies