Bhusan Steel likely to acquire land directly

Bhushan Steel is likely to purchase land directly from the owners for its proposed steel plant in Bengal, spread over 2,500 acres.

The company would start discussions with the land owners over the next two months. "We would like to purchase land directly from the people. We will start talking to them in the next two months," said Rajiv Agarwal, vice-president, commercial, Bhushan Steel. The land is for setting up a 2 million tonnes plant. The project is set to come up near Asansol and the land has already been identified. The entire site, comprising 2,500 acres, is on private land and is barren. Agarwal said the company would talk to the land owners first and if it faced any resistance, it would seek the government support.

If the direct purchase happens, it will be the second instance in Bengal, where a company is directly acquiring land from the people, the first being JSW Steel. The West Bengal government has so far discouraged direct land purchase by companies. The state government prefers the land to be acquired by a government agency and then leased out to the company.

However, Agarwal said Bhushan's memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the state government had both the options and the company would prefer buying land directly from the people.

Bhushan's direct purchase of land may set the trend in West Bengal. Recently, Videocon Chairman Venugopal Dhoot also expressed the willingness to go for direct purchase of land for its proposed special economic zones (SEZs) in the state.

The land acquisition is expected to be completed in six months. The company would come up with a compensation package after talking to the people.

"We don't know what their demands are, we will find out after talking to them," said Agarwal. The compensation would be mostly in cash.

According to the terms of the MoU, Bhushan would also set up a training institute. "We will absorb people on merit," he said.

Apart from the steel plant, Bhushan would also set up a cold rolling facility. Agarwal said the company was shown land in North 24 Parganas, but it wanted it within 30-35 km from Kolkata. Bhushan requires 70-80 acres for the rolling facility.