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The Chennai Port Trust (ChPT) is likely to surrender 121 acres at Mappedu near Sriperumbdur to State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (Sipcot) as no private company wants to develop a dry port multimodal logistics hub there because of poor connectivity, according to sources.
Sipcot allotted the land to ChPT in September 2010 on a 99-year lease for which ChPT remitted ₹100.13 crore as lease charges to develop the dry port under build, operate and transfer mode.
Due to poor response from private companies and also because Sipcot did not accept the port trust’s request to waive the sub-lease charge, the project was found to be unviable.
If ChPT surrenders the land, it may lose nearly ₹39 crore as Sipcot said that the refundable amount will be ₹61.31 crore. The ChPT has sought a break up of the surrender amount and is likely to approach the Tamil Nadu government to waive penalty for premature surrender, the sources said.
The proposed Rajiv Gandhi dry port hub was targeted to serve units in Sriperumbudur and Oragadam, which are major automobile and telecom manufacturing zones respectively. It was supposed to have an inland container depot/off-dock container freight station, container yard, rail and road connectivity to national rail and road network, trade centre, warehouses for containerised cargoes such as leather garments, textiles, automotive components and electronic hardware.
Source said that Central Warehousing Corporation initially showed interest in the project and the land was also considered to consolidate cars for coastal ro-ro movement. However, there was no firm proposal in hand, and response was poor to ChPT’s attempts to put the land to use.
In 2010, the project was taken up as two projects – a mega container terminal in the port and an elevated corridor from the port to Maduravoyal, on the western outskirts – were progressing well. The container terminal project could not be awarded due to low revenue share quoted by the bidder and the elevated corridor is under litigation.
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