Haryana might boast having approval for over 50 special economic zones, but the state has a long way to go. Even land acquisition is yet to commence for some of the projects.
Of all the SEZs, five will be set up by private players in synergy with the Haryana State Industrial and Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC). These are the Reliance Haryana SEZ at Gurgaon and Jhajjar, DLF SEZ at Gurgaon and Ambala, and Unitech SEZ at Kundli, near Sonepat.
The joint venture agreement between Reliance Ventures Ltd (a 100 per cent subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd) and the HSIIDC was signed on June 19, 2006, for setting up a multi-product mega special economic zone over 25,000 acres in Gurgaon-Jhajjar in Haryana (that was later bi-furcated into two SEZs — 12,500 acres at Gurgaon and 12,500 acres at Jhajjar). The HSIIDC got 10 per cent sweat equity in these projects and contributed 1,086 acres from its own land bank.
The state government announced the SEZ at Ghari Harsu in 2003 and spent two years (Jan 2004 to Jan 2006) in acquiring the land for the first SEZ of Haryana to be developed by the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC), which was merged with Reliance SEZ and HSIDC, and was renamed HSIIDC.
According to sources, in the past two years, only about 6,000 acres of land has been acquired. If things move at this pace, it will take another three years to complete the land acquisition.
The other two players, DLF and Unitech, have not even initiated the process of land acquisition. According to sources in DLF, the policy framework of the central government on multi-product SEZs is not firm. So they are waiting for the final guidelines.
Unitech has also not taken action on the front due to similar reasons.
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The joint venture agreements with DLF were signed on April 4 last year for setting up multi-product SEZs at Gurgaon (12,500 acres) and Ambala (3,000 acres).
The joint venture agreement with Unitech was also signed on the same day, for setting up a multi-product SEZ in 4,000 hectares (subsequently additional 4,000 hectares).
Although Reliance has made efforts in acquiring land, the farmers are lured by the real estate developers in the NCR.
Despite the lucrative compensation offered by Haryana (an annual royalty of Rs 10,000 per acre for 33 years to the farmers affected by state industrial and housing projects, besides usual compensation, 25 per cent job reservation for farmers and landless villagers dependent on land acquired and job reservations for dalits as safai karamcharis in the SEZs), the farmers did not show any enthusiasm.
The Hooda government wants to create over one million jobs in SEZs.