Excl: WB govt depts to develop surplus land

The departments of the government of West Bengal (GoWB) have initiated steps to unlock value from their land holdings. The departments have identified surplus land in their possession or land which appeared to be underutilised for this purpose.

Instead of selling the land, the departments have decided to develop them - either directly or as joint ventures with private sector investors - under the public-private partnership (PPP) model, a highly placed source in the state's finance department said.

The source claimed that the Left Front-run government was the first in the country to develop such a model for generation of resources, and elimination of wastage associated with the government departments.

The government policy envisaged retention of land ownership, and generation of income from redevelopment of the surplus plots using the PPP model putting an end to the present situation under which such plots were draining resources and drawing on subsidies for maintenance.

For example, the state's refugee rehabilitation department has just awarded a contract to a consortium of builders to develop 18 acre on the Barrackpore Trunk Road - the main artery in northern Kolkata.

"We will build over 25 lakh square feet of which a little of 5 lakh sq.ft. will go as flats of 645 sq.ft. each to the 800 refugee families residing in the complex at present, and the rest will be shared between us and the government for commercial and residential use, " said Indrajit De, chairman of the New York-based builders consortium Eden Realty Ventures which is executing the project.

Another department that has just done a couple of deals in this regard is the animal resources department, which has huge surplus land 30km north of Kolkata at Haringhata and in north Bengal. Its deals were tripartite in nature - the other two participants being the developer and the state's information technology (IT) department. The animal resources department has handed over land for development, and would gain in the form of built-up commercial space.

"The IT department is now in position to offer built-up space for as low as Rs 25 per sq.ft. at Siliguri, the gateway to north-east India, as a result of such a PPP-based redevelopment," Siddharth, IT secretary of West Bengal, said.

The departments were being encouraged to undertake these initiatives so as to minimise the government's subsidy bill in the case of some departments, the source said.

In the case of some other departments, like information technology (IT), this policy would lead to the creation of commercial property banks that could be used as incentives to attract investors with plug-and-play facilities, the source added.

The departments were owners of large tracts of land acquired in the past for welfare schemes as distinct from land owned by state-owned commercial enterprises. While most of the sick commercial enterprises were now under the industrial reconstruction department, the land directly owned by departments were grossly underutilised though they were located in commercially developed areas or along commercially important highways and transport corridors.

The process of unlocking value from government-owned land was separate from the on-going effort of GoWB to sell or revive, through joint ventures, the many loss-making or closed state-owned public sector enterprises like the 2005 sale of the Great Eastern Hotel.