Bengal clears two new townships, sees Rs 4000cr investment

West Bengal has cleared two theme townships to be developed by private sector that would attract an investment worth around Rs 4,000 crore.
"Out of 15 proposals for new townships received, the government has cleared two theme-based townships, one for tourism and another innovation. We expect work would start within a year," urban development principal secretary Debashis Sen said on the sidelines of CII organised Infra East.
Though it was early to guage the investments, but it could be around Rs 4,000 crore in these two new townships which already received provisional approval by state cabinet.
These two townships would come up around Rajarhat's New Town township.

Sen said the government has received proposals for 13 other townships from private developers and these will get approvals in due course as PPP projects.
He did not divulge the names of the entities that would develop the townships.

Sen reiterated the Mamata Banerjee government stand that land acquisition would have to be done by the developer for their projects. The townships has to be developed on 50 acres or more.
The West Bengal government has decided to develop Asansol as industrial town, Bolpur as culture township and Kalyani as analytics.
Meanwhile, the state has also decided to develop a Kolkata International Arbitration Centre, that will house all infrastructure needed to carryout arbitration cases.

"We will charge fees for the facilities we will provide. This will also boost confidence among the investors specially foreign ones in creating an investor friendly environment in the state," Sen said.