The Bhootkhanb plateau of Keri village panchayat in Ponda, site for the Rs 500-crore Meditab pharma SEZ planned by Cipla, the country’s second largest pharma company, is a deserted place now. The site that was expected to become India’s largest pharmaceutical formulation plant has only four security guards and a few policemen. The sight, a local recalls, is eerily similar to one witnessed in 1994 in the same area — when a nylon plant being set up by the Thapar group with Dupont was shunted out after violent protests killed one person.

While the security officer in charge denies entry inside the complex, citing an ongoing court case, virtually no work is on inside. “All the machinery has been shifted,” the officer says.

Confirming this, Meditab CEO Amar Lulla told The Indian Express from Mumbai: “We can’t keep machinery idle. The costs were increasing so we shifted the plant and machinery out of the site...We have decided to not fight it out legally (if the Centre cancels the SEZ). It is sad that other states are wooing industries and Goa does not want them.”

Actually, the court case and the shifting out of equipment is inter-linked. After anti-SEZ protests turned violent at this site in the last week of 2007, compelling a few hundred non-Goan workers at the site to run away while preventing the entry of new machinery, the state government allegedly withdrew the police security provided at the SEZ. Meditab, in response, filed a case last week against the state government in the Goa High Court against the withdrawal of police cover.

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