KOLKATA: Four Bengal companies are likely to lose their
SEZ status as they have ended up as non-starters. Their fate will be decided by the Board of Approvals (BOA) SEZ under the Union commerce ministry at a meeting in Delhi on Thursday.
Three of them ? Enfield Realtors, Enfield Exports, and Enfield Energy ? were allotted SEZ land in Burdwan while Capstone Developer got the land at the Falta SEZ in South 24-Parganas. SEZ zonal development commissioner Sanjeev Nandwani has recommended denotification of the four units occupying a total 140 acres on the grounds that they didn't set up the promised units years after they got the SEZ status beginning 2007.
These apart, another three units in the Falta SEZ were stripped of their special status for nonpayment of dues. All these cases will come up at the BOA meeting on Thursday. Units seeking SEZ status were accommodated in six SEZs in operation in Bengal, the Falta SEZ being the oldest. Of the six, three SEZs are already under the process of denotification, namely the SEZ at Batanagar, the Bengal Shapoorji SEZ in New Town and the Oval Developers SEZ in South 24-Parganas.
The first three companies in Burdwan belong to Sonthalia Group. Enfield Realtors and Enfield Energy wanted to set up SEZ for non conventional energy including solar while Enfield Exports proposed IT and Ites SEZ. Capstone proposed IT SEZ. The total land under these SEZs is around 140 acres. Enfield Exports has biggest chunk of land of 65 acres while rest have around 25 acres each.
The zonal DC was not available for comment, but the documents available with TOI reveals that the zonal DC had inspected all four SEZs. Enfield Realtors got the SEZ status in May 2007. The land is lying vacant since then. The situation is similar with Enfield Exports that got the SEZ status in August 2007.
"The developer had been requested verbally several times and also through letter dated October 24, 2013, to send a report on investment and schedule time of completion of the project. But no response was received," the zonal SEZ development commissioner observed. Instead, farming is going on in the vacant land. Enfield Energy has not submitted papers five years after it was granted the SEZ status in June 2009.
Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com