http://www.telegraphindia.com/1091007/jsp/frontpage/story_11585566.jsp
The Telegraph, 7 Oct 2009
Changi sends alert on land
fee thorn
Calcutta, Oct. 6: Changi Airport of Singapore has expressed concern
over at least two administrative issues related to land for the
proposed airport city at Andal in Burdwan.
The subjects vexing Changi, a partner in the Rs 10,000-crore
project, are not the usual protests against land acquisition but
the quantum of an administrative
fee and a loan promised to relocate high-tension power lines from
the area earmarked for the airport city.
“These issues could materially
impact the project’s viability and development plan unless sorted
out at the earliest,” according to a letter from
Changi to the local developers, Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Ltd
(BAPL).
The Telegraph has learnt that Eugene Gan, the deputy CEO of Changi
Airport International, wrote to BAPL chief executive Subrata Paul
on August 25, raising the two issues.
The developer, in turn, has written to chief minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee, requesting his intervention.
An element of politics
also appears to be at play. Burdwan is the cradle
of industry minister Nirupam Sen, while the department dealing with
one of the issues raised by Changi is headed by Abdur Rezzak
Mollah, the Bengal industrialisation policy critic recently at the
centre of the Vedic Village controversy.
Soon after Changi joined
BAPL as equity shareholder in July this year, the Singapore
investor felt that the administrative cost demanded by the land
department was high. Administrative cost covers
expenses for official purposes to carry out land acquisition,
excluding the actual land price.
The investors want this cost to be lowered from 10 per cent to 1
per cent of the land price. At 10 per cent, they will have to pay
Rs 20-25 crore for the first-phase requirement of 2,182 acres. The
entire project will need 3,100 acres.
The investors have offered to cover the actual administrative cost,
which they think will be much less than that at 10 per cent.
The company feels that 10 per cent is appropriate when the size of
the land is small but there should be a staggered rate for large
acquisitions.
Sources said the commerce and industry department had mooted
slab-based administrative charges, proposing 1 per cent for
acquisition over 1,000 acres. However, the land department has not agreed
to the proposal, the sources added.
Mollah, the land minister, today
said he personally had not received any request for reduction of
the charge. “It has not reached my table. I don’t know,” he
said.
For BAPL, the land acquisition has been relatively trouble-free so
far. The company is offering land for land, annuity, cash and
vocational training.
The other issue is the
delay in sanctioning a Rs 50-crore soft loan to relocate
high-tension power lines.
BAPL had requested the state government to bear the cost, citing
the airport city as a public infrastructure project, but the
government did not agree. As a compromise, the government offered
the loan which should be returned in six years.
Although the loan was
sanctioned in February, it has not been disbursed yet for some
unexplained reason.
Partho Ghosh, BAPL director, said the company was hopeful of a
speedy resolution.
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