We're against SEZs, allies tell Left Front

KOLKATA: A day after the CPM made a strong plea to the Centre to fix the upper limit for land to be allocated for SEZs, its partners of in West Bengal’s ruling Left Front on Wednesday said they were totally opposed to the move and wanted the SEZ Act to be scrapped.

“We are totally opposed to the setting up of special economic zones. Our party wants the SEZ Act to be scrapped,” state Forward Bloc general secretary Ashok Ghosh said.

Distancing himself from the CPM’s stand in the matter, Mr Ghosh said his party believed that SEZs would not help industrialisation. “It is a ploy to give greater concessions to capitalists at home and abroad in the name of SEZs,” he said.

The Forward Bloc’s state committee will hold a two-day meeting from tomorrow at which the issue will be discussed. The party’s general secretary Debabrata Biswas will attend the meeting. Mr Ghosh was reacting to CPM general secretary Prakash Karat’s statement on Tuesday that there should be a 2,000-hectare ceiling on SEZs and the Centre should set the criteria for industries requiring land for SEZs.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee had earlier announced the scrapping of a SEZ in Nandigram after 14 people died there in police firing on March 14. Mr Ghosh claimed SEZs would create a “new set of zamindars”.

“They will be like countries within a country, and no labour law will be applicable in SEZs. Industries will get all sorts of tax concessions,” he alleged. Industry could come to West Bengal “but not on irrigated and multi-crop land”, he asserted. The state government is yet to issue a land map for industries and submit the report of the Agricultural Commission, he said.

RSP leader and Rajya Sabha member Manoj Bhattacherjee said his party’s central committee has already called for repeal of the SEZ Act. The “indiscriminate establishment of SEZs” was the “most derogatory and anti-people path of purported industrial development”, he said. “The RSP is totally opposed to the concept of SEZ. The SEZ Act is a draconian law,” he claimed.

The CPI, another Left Front partner, said it would not demand the repeal of the SEZ Act since the four Left parties had given a note to the Central government calling for substantial changes in the law and related rules.

“Industrialisation can be done without SEZs. West Bengal witnessed industrial development earlier without SEZs,” state CPI secretary and national council member Manju Kumar Mazumdar said. The CPI will discuss the issue at its state council meeting to be held here on April 6 and 7.