Haryana Government today accused the previous Congress regime of sparing Reliance Haryana SEZ Limited of a Rs 50-crore penalty with regard to its shelved 25000-acre project, while alleging that it was awarded without any tender or competitive bidding process.
As opposition leaders raised the Reliance SEZ issue in the assembly today, State Finance and Industries Minister Abhimanyu said that the then state government had entered into a MoU with Reliance Industries in the year 2005 to set up the Special Economic Zone in the Gurgaon-Jhajjar region.
"A MoU was signed between HSIIDC and Reliance Ventures Limited on December 12, 2005. Based on the decision of the Haryana Cabinet, HSIIDC signed a Joint Venture Agreement (JVA) with Reliance Ventures Limited on June 19, 2006 for setting up a multi product SEZ over an area of 25,000 acres in Gurgaon-Jhajjar.
"However, it was later decided to shelve the SEZ project and JVA was terminated on August 29, 2014," Abhimanyu said, while adding that the previous Congress government had promised "lakhs of jobs" and huge investment in the state from the project.
To questions raised by some independent and INLD MLAs, Abhimanyu informed the House that "no tender/competitive bidding process was followed in firming up the project, but a MoU was signed between the two parties...."
The Minister further stated that many decisions regarding the Reliance SEZ project were taken by the Council of Ministers of the previous Congress government and some even outside the knowledge of the State Cabinet.
He also said that Reliance Industries had returned nearly 1,384 acres of land in Gurgaon that was acquired for its SEZ.
RHSL had last year returned 1,383.68 acres of land in Gurgaon acquired from HSIIDC for setting up SEZs.
Responding to a question raised by an INLD MLA, the Minister said that a penalty of approximately Rs 50 crore could have been slapped by the previous Congress government on the company, but it chose not to do so.
RHSL, was a joint venture between Reliance Ventures Ltd (RVL), RIL's wholly-owned subsidiary, and Government of Haryana through HSIIDC.
The JV was established for development of SEZs/Model Economic Township (MET) project and other infrastructure facilities in Haryana.
The INLD MLAs raised din in the House wanting to know the fate of the directly-purchased land by the company from the farmers.
Responding to this, the Minister said that some issues were still pending in the lower and higher courts and it would not be appropriate to make any comment on these.
"Wherever irregularities are detected, we will probe thoroughly," he assured the Assembly.
