After the fiasco at Nandigram and companies like Tata Motors and DLF pulling out of the state, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today got a reason to cheer when the empowered committee of Union secretaries headed by Cabinet Secretary KM Chandrashekhar cleared the state government’s proposal for setting up a PCPIR (petroleum, chemicals and petro-chemicals investment region) at Haldia and bordering Nayachar in East Midnapore district.

The empowered committee today held a meeting with a delegation of state government officials comprising chief secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti, commerce and industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen and executive director of WBIDC Nandini Chakrabarty, where the state government officials clarified all the queries from the committee members.

The chief minister could not suppress his joy as the news reached him. “It is a great news for the people of the state. I am quite happy,” Bhattacharjee said at Writers’ Buildings.

The state government has already set up a committee headed by former ONGC chairman Subir Raha to advise it on the technical aspects of the project. “We have already submitted a report to the government saying that the chemical hub is quite possible at Nayachar. We have already had two meetings and we are going to visit Nayachar for the second time next week,” Anandadeb Mukherjee, member of the committee, told Indian Express.

The government has hired Jurong Group of Singapore as consultant for the project. West Bengal becomes the third state after Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat to get the PCPIR from the Centre.

What is state’s plan?
According to the Central government requirements, a PCPIR has to be set up on an area of 62,000 acres of land and 40 per cent of it has to be the processing zone, which comes to about 25,000 acres.

While at Haldia there are 15,000 acres of processing zone, Nayachar, across Haldi river, has 10,000 acres of land on which the chemical hub will come up. A bridge will be constructed across the river to connect Haldia and Nayachar.

For the chemical hub, while the Indian Oil will be the anchor investor, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Chemical Complex, a joint venture of NKID of the Salim Group and WBIDC, will be anchor developers. The project will go to the Cabinet, possibly in March, for the final approval. However, the strings attached to the approval mean an environment impact study will have to be done before the project takes off.

The state government earlier planned the project at Nandigram but it had to beat a hasty retreat because of violent protests from farmers there that claimed 30 lives so far. On March 14, 2007 14 people were killed in police firing. Ten people are still missing.

Last December, the CPI lost in the Nandigram Assembly by-election the seat to Trinamool Congress, which spearheaded the anti-land acquisition movement.

At Nayachar, which is a vested land, there are about 1,500 fishermen who will be provided with alternate living. “It is a very small population of some fisherman,” Commerce and Industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen said in Delhi. “But we are committed to providing them with alternate livelihoods.”

Some of the land on the island comes under the coastal regulation and the project will not be extended to those mangroves, according to officials.

The project, of which a refinery is the first step, will generate more than 10 lakh jobs and attract investment of more than Rs 100,000 crore, Sen said.