The Indian Army had to shelve its Netarhat Field Firing project because the Jharkhand government of Chief Minister Madhu Koda said it could not provide land to it. Several key greenfield projects, including those proposed by Naveen Jindal, L N Mittal and Ratan Tata, are hanging fire for years because the Koda government has made little effort to get them any land.

But Koda and Speaker Alamgir Khan are working overtime to acquire about 88 acres of prime, evergreen farm land from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to build bungalows for not only themselves but for over 100 politicians, including all current legislators — 82 MLAs and 20 MPs.

In 2004-05, these legislators got together to register a society, the Vidhayak Evam Sansad Griha Nirman Swawlambi Sahkari Samiti Ltd, and CM Koda, an Independent MLA backed by UPA’s 43 MLAs, has cleared the decks for the land transfer as part of 288 acres he wants from ICAR for “development of the capital of the newly created state.”

The sprawling plot, right along the key Ranchi-Jamshedpur highway, is at present home to Farm Number 2 of ICAR’s Horticulture and Agro Forestry Research Programme (HARP) — under the Union Agriculture Ministry — and has priceless 189 varieties and 30 hybrids of mango trees, 50 and 40 varieties of litchi and guava respectively.

ICAR had planned to upgrade HARP as the Central Institute of Horticulture at a cost of Rs 43 crore. HARP preserves diversified germplasms of these fruits nurtured for research for over 25 years.

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