The Hindu Business Line : Bharat Forge SEZ farmers form company

Pune, April 29 Around 1,000 farmers, who sold their lands to the Maharashtra Government for the development of the Bharat Forge multi-product special economic zone at Khed, have formed a company that will soon go into business with 250 hectares of developed land inside the SEZ as principal assets.

Khed Developers Ltd (KDL), the newly formed company, was registered at Pune a few weeks ago. Of its total land holdings, 187 hectares belong to the farmers. The remaining 63 hectares have been contributed by the Bharat Forge-Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation joint venture (74:26) company that is promoting the SEZ project and will also have a share in the new business entity.

The farmers’ share in KDL’s land kitty comes from pooling small pieces of developed land that have been “bought back” from the MIDC at a pre-fixed price.

Every piece, measuring 15 per cent of the land each sold, is fully paid for as the amount has already been deducted from the respective farmer’s dues.

It may be recalled that in January, the State high power committee sanctioned Rs 219.83 crore as compensation – at Rs 17 lakh a hectare - for the Bharat Forge SEZ. The process of disbursing the cheques, minus what the farmers owe MIDC, began in early February and is now nearing completion.

The Pune district collector, Mr Prabhakar Deshmukh, who is the main architect of the BF-SEZ package deal, told Business Line the newly formed company could develop the property further and lease or rent it out.

“This will be a permanent source of income for all the shareholders,” he said, adding that some details like the structure of KDL, its shareholding etc was still being worked out.

Earlier, to tide over resistance to the land acquisition process, the collector had mooted several sops to the ‘project affected families’ at Khed to make the deal more lucrative.

The rate for buying back 15 per cent of the land that MIDC would develop was fixed at 150 per cent of the acquisition rate.

Amongst the add-ons thrown in were construction of 370 sq ft homes with essential amenities on 3,000 sq ft of land for families who had huts (2,000 sq ft land for homeless families), lumpsum payment of Rs 65 (the minimum agricultural rate in the region) per person for 600 days, and shifting allowance for displaced families. All these expenses to be borne by the joint venture company.

According to Mr Suresh Jadhav, Special Land Acquisition Officer for Khed, 84 per cent of the compensation cheques have been handed over to farmers. He added that the entire process would be completed in a month’s time after which nearly 2,000 hectares of land would be handed over for developing the SEZ.

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