‘Stake to locals can help SEZs’

By Our Special Correspondent

Mumbai

Aug. 24: Mr Sajjan Jindal, managing director of JSW Steel, said there is a need for the government to come up with a policy to make landowners stakeholders in SEZs.

Jindal’s company JSW Bengal Steel is putting up a 10 million tonnes integrated steel plant in West Bengal over 800 acre with land from nearly 1,000 farmers and he said he had no problems as he made them stakeholders.

Mr Jindal’s steel plant is being put up at Shalboni in West Bengal and construction work is starting in November. He said part of this land is government land.

Mr Jindal who met the media in Mumbai was asked to comment on the threat by Mr Ratan Tata to take the Nano project out of West Bengal if the violence continues.

He said that personally he feels that things will work out for Mr Tata, but he stressed "The land issue is becoming more complex." He said "Our approach is different. We had land and some of it was belonged to the government. We had the support of the Trinamool Congress. We counselled the people and took decisions along with them." He said there must "have been some goof up," in the Tata case. Mr Jindal said "one has to understand the ground rules. Agricultural land should be left alone and the government should come with a policy document stressing the need to make landowners the stakeholders in the project."

He said that in addition to compensation for the land to the farmers, his company has given them shares equivalent to the amount of compensation given.

He said the compensation is in three phases: first the money was deposited with the State bank of India and farmers would get interest at 9.5 per cent. The compensation amount he said could have been around Rs 100 crore. The second was one job per family and people were trained in skills for this. And lastly, they were given shares equivalent to the land value.

The company has also taken over the ITI training school and over 100 farmers are being trained there, he said