KOLKATA: The Supreme Court notice to the Centre and several states on Monday , asking them to submit their responses to a PIL seeking return of unused
SEZ land to farmers is likely to have an impact on 17 SEZs in Bengal, involving around 850 acres.
A source in the department of industrial policy and promotion said that as the Trinamool government had been against SEZs, no new SEZ had come up in the state since it assumed power in 2011.
"All the operational SEZs were notified during the Left regime. Even land acquisition for the SEZs, which are nonoperational now, was done then," the official said.
Out of seven operational SEZs in the state -Falta SEZ, Manikanchan, Wipro SEZ, M L Dalmiya and Co SEZ, Unitech Hi-tech Structure, DLF SEZ and TCS SEZ in New Town -five are for IT and ITeS and two for manufacturing. The total area under these SEZs is around 500 acres.
Sources said there are 12 SEZs in Bengal which have got formal approvals, but in most cases, the formal approval has not been extended because none of them got state recommendation. These projects include Capston Developer, Abex Infocom, Haldia FTWZ, Salarpuria Properties, Enfield Infra, Enfield Realtors, Orion IT Park and Bengal Shristi Infra. The land under these projects would be around 700 acres.
There are four SEZs where de-notification process has been started but could not be completed. Some have even asked for re-notification of their SEZ status. These are: Bengal Sapoorji Developers, Bengal Shriram Hitech City , Oval Developers and Enfield Exports.
After lying low for four years, tech giants Wipro and Infosys have applied for special economic zone (SEZ) status for their projects on 50 acres each in Rajarhat last month. Trinamool in its manifesto in 2011clearly said it is against the principle of for mation of an SEZ. However, SEZ was not mentioned in the manifesto of 2016.
It is learnt that the Trinamool leadership has reservation about an `SEZ' tag, which renders plenty of tax sops.The Wipro application, which was heard last month by Board of Approvals, was kept on hold as there was no state recommendation.
SEZ sops include duty-free importdomestic procurement of goods for development, operation and maintenance of SEZ units, 100% income tax exemption on export income for SEZ units under Section 10AA of the Income Tax Act for first five years, 50% for next five thereafter and 50% of ploughed back export profit for next five years.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com