Land crunch stalls plans to set up industries in Vadodara

Deadend The seven GIDCs in the district find it difficult to acquire land as owners strike hard bargain.

Even as two-wheeler manufacturer Hero Motocorp recently announced postponing its proposed plant at Halol near Vadodara by a year due to delay in acquiring land, hundreds of industrial units seeking investments in regions surrounding Vadodara face similar predicament as Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) finds acquiring land an arduous task.

In fact, the GIDC recently decided to give up expansion plan for its Por unit near Vadodara as "there is no land to offer," a source said.

As many as 967 applications are pending with the GIDC seeking land in Por. "The officials had been trying to acquire around 300 hectares of land for the last three years to meet the demand of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) but were not successful as there is no land to offer in the region," a Vadodara GIDC official said.

GIDC officials are similarly facing difficulty in acquiring around 200 hectares of land for the proposed expansion of the existing Savli GIDC for 1,270 entities which have shown interest in investment in the region. Savli is located nearly 40 kilometre from Vadodara.

"Villagers are not ready to offer agriculture land at the price we are offering, which is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to expand the GIDC at Savli," an official with GIDC Vadodara said, requesting anonymity.

According to him, the price offered by the government is much less than what is demanded by the villagers, which is the main reason why people are least interested in offering their land. "While we are offering Rs 350 per square metre, villagers are demanding Rs 1,500 for the same," he said.

The body entrusted with acquiring land for industries on behalf of the state government has already decided not to go ahead with the proposed land acquisition in Waghodia GIDC for around 126 pending applications due to unavailability of land.

... contd.

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