Worried over a possible political fallout at a time when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi is bracing for the crucial 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP Government has decided to shrink by 80 per cent the mammoth Special Investment Region (SIR) proposed to be set up next to the Maruti plant near Mandal-Becharaji in North Gujarat.

The State Government was particularly worried about the farmers’ ongoing agitation as it prepares to launch a massive programme for agriculture in September on the lines of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit held in January 2013.

The SIR was proposed to emerge as a massive cluster of automobile and textile industries alongside the Delhi-Mumbai Freight Corridor, and was to be part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). The Mandal-Becharaji SIR was one of seven such notified regions. It is predominantly agricultural area without many industries.

Enthused at the response it got after Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL) decided to set up a car factory in Mehsana district last year, the State Government had announced that it would create an SIR in the adjacent Mandal-Becharaji area spread over nearly 51,000 hectares (101 sq km), covering 44 villages, which is the bare minimum requirement for an SIR.  This area was to be spread over Ahmedabad, Surendranagar and Mehsana districts. This includes the proposed Maruti Suzuki plant at Hansalpur on the Becharaji-Viramgam Highway for which the State Government had allotted 700 acres last year.

Apparently dissatisfied over compensation-related issues vis-à-vis what one of their counterparts around Sanand in Ahmedabad district got after Tata Motors moved in around 2008, the Mehsana farmers had mounted a number of protests, rallies and representations against this decision.

Following this agitation, the State Government had formed a ministerial committee in July to sort matters out. On its recommendation, the State Government on Wednesday decided  to prune the SIR area to just 10,172 hectares spread over only eight villages, which is almost one-fifth of the original plan. The 36 villages being excluded will now be denotified and eight villages renotified, said Nitin Patel, Finance Minister and Government spokesman-member in the special committee. He said a majority of farmers in these eight villages “favoured” SIR.

Farmers from the 44 villages, led by two NGOs, Jamin Adhikar Andolan Gujarat, and Azad Vikas Sangathan, were spearheading the movement against the State Government’s plan.

This was the second such major agitation by Gujarat farmers against the State Government’s policies to acquire farm land for industrial development. Earlier, Bhavnagar farmers had protested on environmental grounds against Nirma’s attempt to set up a cement plant.  

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