Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

No impropriety in land allotment, says Karim

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Industries Minister Elamaram Karim has denied media allegations about impropriety in allotting a stretch of industrial park area at Iranavu in Kannur district to the promoters of a private power project.

In a statement issued here on Saturday, he said acquisition of 164.22 acres (one acre is just over 0.4 hectares) of land at Iranavu was completed by Kerala Infrastructure Development Corporation (Kinfra) way back in 2000. The land was acquired for Kannur Power Project Pvt. Ltd, which had K.P.P. Nambiar as chairman.

The company did not take over the land from Kinfra in spite of all efforts to make it do so. Therefore, the government issued an order in September 2009 (instructing Kinfra) to cancel the agreement for providing land to Kannur Power Project and start an industrial park in the acquired area.

Notice issued

The statement said Kinfra issued a notice to the company in September 2009 cancelling the agreement with the company.

Kinfra also published advertisements in leading national dailies on July 14, 2009, inviting expression of interest [from entrepreneurs] in connection with the establishment of an industrial park in the area.

Mr. Karim said only a Noida-based company Jayaprakash Power Venture Ltd. responded to the advertisements.

Twice Kinfra extended the time for receiving expression of interest with the intention of eliciting interest from more companies. When response did not come from any other firms, Kinfra decided to allot the land on lease for 90 years to Jayaprakash Power Venture Ltd. for establishing a power project with capacity to generate 240 MW of electricity.

The procedures for allotting the land were transparent and were done fully in keeping with the norms and stipulations to be followed in such a case.

Kinfra had to adhere to clearly articulated land disposal regulations.

Pricing committee

Kinfra's pricing committee had fixed the price of this land after factoring in all the expenses incurred for land acquisition, the compensation amounts involved in disputes over additional land acquisition decided by courts till November 2009 and all other establishment expenses, the Minister said.

Compensations that might have to be paid subsequently for land acquisition were the responsibility of the lessee.

The procedures followed in this case were exactly the same as those the Kinfra had followed while acquiring and handing over land to entrepreneurs and Union public sector companies.

The Industries Minister said even newspaper organisations had received land for their offices and printing establishments in Kinfra parks as per the very same procedures.

Power generation

Mr. Kareem said it was important for the State to probe ways to increase power generation. Jayaprakash Power Venture Ltd had submitted an application for starting a power project in the State. This application was evaluated (by the government) before the decision to allot the land to the company.

He noted that there were several procedures that had to be gone through before the company could start work on the power project. It had to receive environment clearance, for which studies would have to be done and the public would have to be heard. Not even preliminary discussions (between the government and the company) on this project were now complete, the Industries Minister added.

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