KOLKATA: Farmers giving their land for the proposed Rs. 35,000 crore steel plant — being envisaged as the biggest in the country — by Jindal Group's JSW Bengal Steel Ltd. at Salboni in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district will be offered free shares in the company worth the amount to be paid to them for their plots. They will be allowed to sell their shares once production begins from April 2011.

Fifty per cent of the payment for their land will also be deposited with an insurance company from where they can earn annuity while the remaining half will be handed to them following negotiations, the company proposes.

One person from each of the 741 families concerned would be provided employment in the plant after the necessary training, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Thursday after a meeting with Sajjan Jindal of Jindal Group.

This compensation package is expected to remove any misgivings over land acquisition for the project. Those giving their land "should be owners of the plant," Mr. Jindal said.

It assumes significance in the backdrop of movements spearheaded by the Trinamool Congress, the State's principal Opposition party, against the acquisition of land for industry at Nandigram and Singur. While the State Government finally retracted from plans to set up a chemical hub in the former, the stir against the setting up of the Tata Motors car manufacturing project — work for which has begun — has been renewed.

Though the farmland earmarked for acquisition for the proposed steel plant is about 450 acres, the agricultural yield is meagre. The first round of talks between the company representatives and the landowners has been completed, a second is in the offing, Mr. Bhattacharjee said.

The Chief Minister made clear the project would not be impinging on any forest land, as alleged. Neither shall "any homestead be touched."

"The bulk of the land to be acquired is government land, the price of which will be determined as per the stipulated rates," Mr. Bhattacharjee added.

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