In what was a round table conference to review the progress of the National Industrial Corridor Development Program (NICDP), the Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal gave an ultimatum to the states to speed up the land acquisition and overall development process. He set a deadline for acquisition and allotment of land in industrial nodes and clusters during the meeting held on Thursday. He also said that there should be no land squatting and proper units must be set up for creating of new jobs and sweating up the resources and assets.
Eighteen states are being urged to do their decision making very quickly, offer the land, otherwise we will be forced to foreclose those projects and maybe offer then to other states who may be willing to speed up the investment.”
Piyush Goyal
The NICDP is being hailed as the most ambitious plan to covert industrial clusters and nodes into ‘smart citites’. Goyal also shared how resilient future ready smart industrial cities will propagate equitable economic growth and employment generation within the country alongside sustainable development.
According to Goyal, the pan-India initiative – aimed at development of plug and play infrastructure – would help boost domestic manufacturing ecosystem in India. The ‘plug and play’ infrastructure at the plot level is being developed in four cities – Dholera (Gujarat), Shendra Bidkin (Maharashtra), Vikram Udyogpuri (Madhya Pradesh), and Integrated Industrial Township (Greater Noida), and the land allotment is currently underway. The plots in these cities, covering 851 acre, are expected to mobilise an investment of more than INR 16,000 crore from various international entities. Out of these, Greater Noida will allot land in 20 days, and Dholera has slashed price of land cost by 50% for the first 30% of land acquired.
The e-land management system (e-LMS) should be implemented across all the projects and continuous monitoring should be done through an integrated dashboard.” he added.
The National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (NICDC) is developing 11 corridors comprising 32 projects in 4 phases. It was approved in December 2020 with the target to achieve the goal by 2026-27 and is a part of the PM Gati Shakti Plan for reducing the national logistics cost.
