The referendum in 22 villages that are part of the Mumbai Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in Raigad district was a unique event; it will not be repeated in the case of any other industrial, infrastructure or SEZ project, according to Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.
He was speaking at the Press conference called to give details on investment he managed to bring in from his weeklong Europe tour, which concluded on Wednesday.
There was a need to take a referendum in these villages because of changes in SEZ policy; after the land got notified for acquisition, the central government came out with guidelines of no “forcible acquisition”, so “we told the company developing the SEZ that the state will not acquire land for it. It will have to do the job on its own, though the notification for the land acquisition will remain in force”, Deshmukh said.
Subsequently, the central government further modified the guidelines and prohibited the acquisition of land that is irrigated and as the land in these 22 villages can get water from the Hetavane dam, social activists and farmers from this region raised the demand for excluding these villages from the acquisition notification.
However, as some villagers had sold land to the SEZ project, the need arose for finding out whether the farmers wanted the SEZ or not, he said.
Deshmukh said it was premature to speculate whether the state government would remove the 22 villages from the project if a majority of the farmers said “no” to it, because the state government was yet to receive a report from the district collector on the referendum exercise and it would take a decision after holding a detailed discussion on the collector's report.
