Rs 31,000cr investments lined up in a day

The government of West Bengal today lined up projects worth Rs 31000 crore in the form of two integrated steel and power plants to be built by the Videocon and the Jai Balaji groups.

The projects would need over 7000 acres of land, with the state government declaring it would take care to exclude acquisition of agricultural land to put up the projects.

The land for both the projects was yet to be acquired, though the process was believed to be in motion already.

The memorandum of agreement was signed on behalf of the government by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, and West Bengal Mineral Development Corporation here today.

Videocon group would build a Rs 15000 crore integrated 3 million ton per annum (mn.tpa)) steel plant and 1200MW power plant in the Barabani region of Bardhaman district.

As for the Jai Balaji Group project, 4000 acres near Raghunathpur in Purulia district had been identified.

Jai Balaji would be setting up a 5mn.tpa integrated steel plant, a 3mn.tpa cement plant and a 1215MW captive power plant with a total investment of Rs16000 crore.

This investment in Purulia would take the no-industry district forward, Budhdhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of the state, said.

Videocon would manufacture value-added steel for the automotive, shipping and engineering industries.

The Videocon project would require around 3000 acres, and low-lying plots had been identified along the banks of the Ajay river.

The area remained inundated for some months every year, and was sparsely populated, claimed Venugopal Dhoot, chairman of Videocon group.

The acquisition process should not be difficult as land-holders were likely to give up their land willingly for the project, Dhoot added.

The Videocon project would create direct and indirect employment for around 10,000 people.

Dhoot said either the state government could facilitate, acquire, and then transfer the land to it, or the government could simply act as facilitator while Videocon itself acquired the land directly.

A special purpose vehicle under the name of Videocon Natural Resources Ltd had been floated, promoted by the Dhoot family, for the purpose, said Dhoot.

Videocon would form a 50:50 JV with an US-based company with expertise in mining and power and debt equity ratio for the project would be 70:30.

The Videocon plant was likely to use water from the adjoining Ajay river at rates at which the government sold water to other users, said Dhoot.

For the Jai Balaji project, the state's Rural Development Department was conducting a socio-economic survey on the demographic details per family residing in the Purulia region.

Based on the survey data, local people would be absorbed in the project, with the workforce including skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled labourers, said Aditya Jajodia, chairman and managing director of Jai Balaji group.

Jai Balaji would be setting up a metallurgical training institute in the region to train locals, so that they could be absorbed in the project.

Jai Balaji would also build a township and related infrastructure on 500 acres.

WBIDC would acquire land for the township.

The 5mn.tpa steel plant would source iron ore from neighbouring states of Jharkhand, Orissa, and Chhattisgarh.

Jai Balaji was already buying around 2.5mn.tpa of iron ore from private and public companies in these states for its existing projects and this would be scaled up.

Steel would be made by converting the iron ore into pellets and sinter and initially, around 6mn.tpa of pellets and 3mn.tpa of sinter would be produced by Jai Balaji. Jai Balaji was likely to import coking coal from South Africa and Australia while coal supply would be secured by the state government.