The Hindu Business Line : There’s a spoke in the wheel at emerging auto-hub Chakan

The Maharashtra Government has been sitting on giving the final go-ahead for acquiring around 1,400 hectares of land at India’s own motor city Chakan for nearly a year, causing severe embarrassment to Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) officials who are fast losing face with both prospective buyers and sellers.

“Since the middle of last year, we have been telling clients that they will be given plots in a few weeks,” says one MIDC official. In addition to loss of credibility with customers, the officials are also at the receiving end of the farmers’ ire, as they had been promising them payment for their lands by last Diwali.

The delay may cause several potential investors, with whom MIDC has been in discussions for some time, to lose patience and find alternative locations for their projects. As it is, the land crunch in the region prompted large clients like Renault-Nissan and Honda Motors to take their Greenfield projects to other Sates last year. Now, sources fear, Daimler Hero Motor Company, which has identified Chakan as one of the possible locations for its Rs 4,400-crore commercial vehicle joint venture project, might just do likewise.

The land in question is a tract of 1,444 hectares, dubbed as Chakan phase II, that was notified as far back as in 1997. The procedure for acquisition is now nearly complete and, since late last May, is awaiting the Government nod under Section 32/2 of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Act. Once this is obtained, the acquisition rate is negotiated, and it is a matter of a few weeks before land comes into MIDC possession.

With the monsoon round the corner, farmers here who take a single crop annually are in a quandary of whether or not to prepare their lands for sowing. They approach Mr Purushottam Jadhav, Regional Officer, MIDC, Pune for a time line on the matter. ‘I tell them plainly, ‘I cannot tell you anything’,” he shrugs, clearly miffed that there is zero progress on the issue for a year. ‘If they sow the crop, it will be at least November before the land will come in our possession,” he adds.

Chakan, one of the world’s fastest growing industrial areas, already has around 1,300 hectares of land that is all sold out to buyers such as Volkswagen, Bajaj Auto, Mercedes Benz, M&M-ITEC, JCB and several auto component makers. At full capability, the region, which includes neighbouring Talegaon, is pegged to produce 18 lakh four-wheelers annually, which is more than the total production of Britain.

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