Now, DMK supremo M Karunanidhi is likely to visit New Delhi soon to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi, in a last-ditch attempt to prevent investors’ flight from the state. His strongly-worded letter to the PM a few weeks back had failed to break the impasse.

In Andhra Pradesh, Brandix Apparels, which has been awaiting the notification of its textile SEZ to start operations, is now considering retrenching the 600-odd women workers it trained and employed. “They are not here for charity. If their commercial operations are not starting, they can’t keep employees on their rolls indefinitely,” the government official said.

Commerce Ministry officials too seem to have given up hope of a resolution of the current stalemate at least till the UP elections conclude. Till then, they are bracing for a sharp dip in investor enthusiasm for SEZs. “We expect a 25 per cent drop from the existing investment plans for SEZs,” an official said.

The fact is that killing of 11 people in the police firing in Nandigram could not have come at a worse time. Last week, the Commerce Ministry briefed former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh and former Karnataka Chief Minister Veerappa Moily on the entire SEZ policy of the UPA government in a bid to address all the concerns of the High Command. The two former CMs were given detailed clarifications on the following issues:

• SEZ impact on domestic industry (Ministry said that this is one of the many earlier schemes like EOU)

... contd.