State energy minister Ajit Pawar on Friday said that if people refused to part with their land that was necessary for putting in place infrastructure for power projects, land could be acquired from them by invoking the urgency clause.

He said, “The state government has formed a committee comprising the Chief Minister, Deputy Chief Minister, cabinet ministers of Forest, Revenue and Energy, who will hold fortnightly meetings to discuss the issues pertaining to the power projects in the state,”

“At some places, people do not part with their land for putting in place infrastructure for electricity projects, like erecting pylons. In such cases, we can acquire the land by bringing into play the urgency clause. This is necessary to push pending and unresolved projects,” Pawar said adding, “Apart from the projects of public utility, Mahagenco, we are encouraging private players like Tata and Reliance, to come ahead and set up plants. Farmers would be given suitable compensation for their agriculture land.”

The minister further said that apart from thermal, gas, hydro and wind energy projects, a number of sugarmills have shown their willingness to increase their capacity of co-generation.

“Now it is time to move ahead and produce more power than that would suffice the needs of the state. Cut-to-cut availability of power has been enough, now we want to create surplus power. Only then, more and more industrial units would invest in Maharashtra. We want to create a situation, in which our state would be able to provide power to other states,” he added.