Bengal govt offers land to JSW Steel

KOLKATA: The West Bengal government has offered land at Rs 1.9 lakh per acre to Sajjan Jindal’s JSW Bengal Steel for setting up a 10-million tonne integrated steel venture at Salboni in West Midnapore district, report Manisha Choudhury & Rakhi Mazumdar. “The land is being offered on a 95-year lease,” Abdur Rezzak Molla, West Bengal’s land & land reforms minister, told ET.

It is the first time since the Singur and Nandigram issues blew in its face, that the state government moving decisively on allotting land for industrial use. The land offered is entirely fallow and not comparable with the fertile tracts at Singur or Nandigram. The offer was made in a formal letter to JSW Bengal on Friday. The board of JSW Steel, which holds 89% in JSW Bengal, will consider the offer.

On its part, JSW Bengal excluded 78 acres of forest land from its proposed site at Salboni. This has led to a re-alignment of the project plan. As per the original plan, the plant’s third blast furnace was supposed to come up in that location. The venture ran into an environmental hurdle when the forest department objected to the use of some 158 acres of forest land, for the project planned over 4,800 acres.