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.

Though the case is only likely to be heard later this month, five policemen led by a sub-inspector were back at the site after the case was filed. However, the changing political mood at the state as well as the Centre on SEZs in Goa — 12 proposed zones and three already notified (including the Cipla SEZ) — meant that instead of carrying on with the project under police cover, Cipla stopped work altogether and even moved out the machinery that was in place.

Cipla claims it has already spent Rs 200 crore at the site “The amount was spent on construction and our commitments, orders placed from various agencies,” Lulla says. The project report for the SEZ that was cleared by the State as well as the Central government had projected exports of more than Rs 2,500 crore in five years and employment generation for 1lakh people.

While environmentalists raised concerns about pollution levels increasing in the plateau due to the plant’s operations, Cipla’s legal advisor Nitin Sardesai said: “Cipla has a number of pharma plants in the state and nowhere there is pollution or even a single complaint the company.”

Cipla has nine plants in the state’s Verna industrial area, starting from 2000, that export 1200 products to 170 countries. “There is not a complaint against them,” Lulla says about the Verna facilities that were even visited by former US President Bill Clinton in 2006. Yesterday, chief minister Digamber Kamat who was in the capital to meet top Congress bosses and Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath, asking for all SEZs in the state to be scrapped, was caustic and said, “What has Cipla done for Goa? What has been their social contribution?”

“The SEZ at Keri was to be a green industry and we have all the necessary permissions, from the state as well as the Centre. We even have the Panchayat’s permission and we have conceded all their demands including starting a school and giving jobs to the locals. I don’t know what the objections are,” Lulla says.

Vedesh Jalmi, the local Sarpanch and a dentist, who led the opposition to the pharma SEZ, however, says that more than “environmental pollution,” people are worried about “social pollution.”

“If one lakh people are to employed here as stated by Cipla in its project report, then there is a danger of social pollution,” seconds Dattaram Dessai from neighboring Savoiverem. That’s a strange argument against industry in a state whose revenues are largely driven by tourists around the world who flock here.

But with Nath, who has championed the SEZ policy in the face of vehement opposition in the last two years, backing the Goa CM yesterday, the company that was intending to sue the government if it moved to cancel their notification, has changed tack.

Rajya Sabha MP from Goa who accompanied Kamat to the capital, Shantaram Naik, says that Cipla had misrepresented project details regarding its employment potential, overall investment and environmental degradation and therefore, it should be scrapped and their claim of compensation cannot be entertained. Lulla wants to know what exactly has the company misrepresented and has stressed that the company has never asked for any sort of compensation.

In fact, that seems to be the exit route suggested by the Centre to the state since the SEZ Act per se doesn’t offer much room for denotifying SEZs. The notification of SEZs by the Centre under the Act is to be guided by these factors — additional economic activity generation, promotion of investment and exports, development of infrastructure and creation of employment opportunities.

If the state can prove it was misled by the SEZ promoters about these factors, then ostensibly, it could be argued that all clearances were invalid. Which is why Nath told Kamat to write a formal letter to the Centre stating the specific reasons for denotifying the three notified SEZs in the state.