Patna,(BiharTimes): The Bihar unit of PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industries has expressed concern over the Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, which was passed recently by Lok Sabha.
In a letter written to the chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday its Bihar unit chairman, Satyajit Singh, wrote that the new law “is going to be another blow to private investment and industrialisation for Bihar.”
“The high compensation norm with 80 per cent consent, the social impact assessment report and mandatory rehabilitation and resettlement could take years delaying all investment ranging from manufacturing sector to power projects in Bihar,” the letter said.
It said that the Bill is going “to harm the economic prospect of Bihar more than the Freight Equalisation Policy of the past. The industrialised or developed state will again grow because of its surplus generation in the past and they can tackle the four times compensation cost and other expenses to get land but the less industrialised state like Bihar with less surplus available to the local investor will not participate in the industrialisation process and investor outside state will find it more difficult under the changed scenario. Again when Bihar gets special status then the issue of land will harm the prospect.”
The letter to the CM said “the Bihar State Industrial Investment and Advisory Council (BSIIAC) was formed in August 2012 with its first meeting in Sept 2012 with noted industrialist, economist and management experts, bankers under your chairmanship with one of the objective to fast track industrial growth and investment in the state.”
But the BSIIAC in its earlier avatar as the Bihar Development and Investment Council in 2006 “despite having several important luminaries of the country on board failed to complete the task of drawing a roadmap after its maiden meeting in April 2007.”
The PHDCCI hopes that “sooner or later Bihar will get its due but we have to prepare the State and its component to get the benefit of the special status, particularly in getting the private investment and big ticket investment so that we can convert the State from the labour supplier state to a manufacturing state.”
The Chamber letter further felt that “for getting the benefit of special status category concessions and big ticket private investment the state has to solve the twin blockade of investment mismatch alignment between land and power or one can say the land deficit and power deficit.”
The letter said the land issue has to be tackled in the background of statistics (Permanent Settlement tenurial system with less than one acre holding average, a land market needs title to land and land records have not been updated, continuous increase in circle rate in last seven years, more than 80 per cent of population is dependant on agriculture, 95 per cent of land are fertile with most of the land are multi-crop & emotional and political issues.