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During his recent visit to Singapore, chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao had spoken about making Telangana as a graft-free state besides promising the best industrial policy to attract investments from all over the world.
Back home, the situation seems quite contrary if not deteriorating. A case in point: local representatives of global FMCG major, Procter & Gamble, on Wednesday sought the intervention of chief minister’s office after failing to overcome multiple hurdles created against a manufacturing plant being set up by it on the outskirts of Hyderabad.
The company had acquired 175 acres of land in 2012 at Kottur in the neighbouring Mahabubnagar district to set up Asia’s biggest manufacturing facility, with a capacity that will exceed all its existing plants’ in India put together, at an investment of $ 800 million.
The idea was to create a manufacturing hub for several of its products in Hyderabad to cater to South India and beyond as the city is centrally located.
After investing around $150 million to make the first phase of the project ready, the company has scaled down its power demand to 2 Mw from the originally envisaged 10 Mw following the hardships it had to face at the hands of various government agencies, according to sources in the know.
However, a company spokesperson said: “India continues to be a priority for P&G globally and our new and now operational state of the art manufacturing facility in Hyderabad is testament to this. We continue to invest in India and in our Hyderabad plant in line with our vision.”
Consider this: The state government’s legal metrology department had seized the weighing equipment that the company had brought from overseas to install at the plant on technical grounds. It had kept it under seizure for the past 45 days. It had even slapped criminal cases against the company besides demanding heavy penalties for unknown violations.
The company had laid an approach road at its own cost to connect the plant site with the nearest road even though government agencies were obligated to create such a facility for it under the existing industrial policy.
On the contrary, the roads and buildings (R&B) department had slapped a demand notice for Rs 60 lakh on the company to allow the approach road to be connected to the road under its management stating it would create additional traffic.
This does not end here. A local mandal revenue officer (MRO) has initiated legal proceedings against the company after having found that 5-6 guntas of government assigned land (40 guntas make 1 acre of land) was part of the piece of land on which the company had built the approach road. The official did not relent even after the company agreed to pay compensation to the government towards this error. The officer above him — revenue divisional officer — issued yet another notice to the company on the grounds that a resident of Nizamabad district had claimed that one of his ancestors had tenancy rights over the land that is currently in possession of P&G.
The officials heading the Hyderabad plant met chief minister's principal secretary S Narsing Rao and informed him that they could employ just 150 people at the plant, which was to provide 1,500 direct and over 4,000 indirect jobs, due to these hurdles, according to sources. Incidentally P&G was the only manufacturing company, which had promised to provide 80 per cent jobs to locals in the undivided AP.
They also informed him that at several instances the real reason behind the harassment being meted out to them was the demand for personal favours, including bribe.
When contacted to know the reasons for seizing the company equipment, S Gopal Reddy, controller, Legal Metrology, said it was a closed chapter. “There could be cases if there are violations. Anyway, I can not tell off hand as to what were those reasons, over phone. You better approach the local inspector,” he told Business Standard. Reddy, who is a senior IPS officer of Jammu & Kashmir cadre, recently came here on deputation as he hails from Telangana.
