The Uttar Pradesh government has grounded Anil Ambani's plan to set up a multi-product special economic zone at Noida. The state cabinet, which met in Lucknow on Saturday, recommended to the Centre that the project is not in tune with the commerce ministry's guidelines on SEZs and therefore "not feasible".
Briefing reporters, a state government spokesman said as per the guidelines, forcible acquisition of farmers' land has been prohibited. The Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group requires at least 2,000 acres more land and this cannot be met without "forcible acquisition of land".
The Mayawati government had raised objections to the SEZ soon after coming to power in May and set up a committee of secretaries headed by the Industrial Development commissioner Atul Gupta, to review the SEZ policy of the previous government. The recommendations of the committee were placed before the Cabinet on Saturday.
The spokesman said there were two issues before the committee - one was the difficulties faced by the promoters in land acquisition and the other the complaints against the promoters of the SEZ in UP.
He said the government had received several complaints about the SEZ promoted by the ADAG group.
The spokesman said the state government would in no way involve itself in the acquisition of the land for the SEZ. In view of the protests by the farmers and violent incidents in several states, the government does not think the project would be feasible.
The state government had earlier decided to refer the ADAG proposal to the Centre as this does not conform to the guidelines laid down by the commerce ministry. The state government had then said that as per the SEZ guidelines laid down by the Centre, no SEZ should be located on a contagious plot of land.
In the case of the ADAG project, a road is located between the two plots of land and hence this violated the guidelines.