The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in West Bengal will scrap the urban land ceiling Act, meeting a long-standing demand of industry, state finance minister Swapan Dasgupta said on Friday.
Speaking at a business conclave organised by The Delhi Council of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCC&I), Dasgupta said the government has taken certain important initiatives in terms of reforms. “We are going to scrap the land ceiling Act, which has been a recurrent demand for a long time,” he said.
His remarks follow the inaugural Budget by the Suvendu Adhikari-led government on Monday, where it had been noted that Bengal is the only major state where the urban land ceiling policy is still implemented.
“This has been a major investment bottleneck which hampers large-scale institutional investments… I hereby announce that the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, 1976 will be re-examined to unlock the potential of developable land, attract major investments and fuel economic growth in urban areas,” the Budget speech had mentioned.
According to Sushil Mohta, president, Credai West Bengal, the land ceiling law had set back organised urbanisation in Bengal by at least 25 years. “Instead of encouraging planned urban development, the law fragmented land holdings into multiple 500 square metre parcels to bypass the ceiling restrictions. As a result, large parts of the city developed in an unorganised and haphazard manner,” he explained.
Harshavardhan Neotia, chairman, Ambuja Neotia, said that this is why the Act had been repealed in many other states. “It continues in West Bengal and therefore there is every reason for it to be discontinued here as well,” he said.
At the conclave, Dasgupta mentioned some of the other reforms proposed in the Budget. “We are going to make it easier for people who invest more than ₹100 crore to get all the various clearances,” he said.
For an immediate boost to the retail sector, the government is aiming to make Kolkata open 24×7. There will also be a cloud kitchen policy for women entrepreneurs.
Dasgupta acknowledged that the reforms would put pressure on state finances, but said the government was banking on higher economic growth to offset the fiscal cost. “It’s going to cost us some. It’s going to strain the exchequer. But we believe that the growth trajectory we’ve set will enable us to cover a lot of that. So we are banking on growth. It’s a gamble,” he said.
Highlighting that Bengal is capturing interest across the country, he said: “Bengal is back. It’s back with a bang.”
Sanjeev Sanyal, member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Economic Advisory Council, said: “We need a major hub in eastern India. By sheer size and history, it’s got to be Kolkata.”
He said a long list of measures would be required to get Kolkata to fire. “But the first place to start would be by unlocking a huge amount of derelict, industrial land that is lying around.”
Companies outline investment plans
Some companies outlined investment plans for Bengal at the conclave.
Dip Kishore Sen, advisor to chairman and managing director, development projects, minerals & metals, LTSSHF & L&T Aviation, Larsen & Toubro, said: “We are building a software park here in the Bengal Silicon Valley, which will create employment for 25,000 people. The first phase is almost complete.” The company also plans to build a data centre with a likely investment of ₹2,500 crore.
Abhijit Roy, BCC&I president and managing director and chief executive officer, Berger Paints, India, said the company has four factories in Bengal. “We are setting up the fifth at Panagarh (West Bengal),” he said. The initial investment envisaged was ₹350-400 crore.
However, Roy added that the company was waiting for the industrial policy and incentives: “Once it happens, we would like to scale up the investment to over ₹600 crore.”
Navanit Narayan, wholetime director and chief executive officer, Haldia Petrochemicals, said the company was investing ₹6,000 crore in India’s largest phenol acetone plant.
Jayanta Roy, managing director, The Peerless General Finance and Investment Company, announced ₹1,000 crore investment across verticals.
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