Mamata Banerjee enters Parliament to present her budget. Picture by Rajesh Kumar

Calcutta, July 3: Mamata Banerjee today tried to shed her post-Singur “anti-industry” image by announcing a series of projects for Bengal that would “help in providing employment”.

In her railway budget, she announced a new coach factory at the Kanchrapara-Halishahar railway complex in North 24-Parganas, a 1000MW power plant at Purulia’s Adra, a component factory at Dankuni, Hooghly, and a high-speed bogie casting unit at Majherhat, South 24-Parganas.

Besides, the railways is talking to the Union heavy industries ministry to see if the wagon manufacturing units of Burn Standard and Braithwaite can be taken over.

Mamata also asked the Bengal government to hand over to the railways the state-run printing press, Basumati Sahitya Mandir, which “unfortunately is lying unutilised”.

She told Parliament: “I visualise an eastern industrial corridor developing alongside (the) eastern dedicated freight corridor (proposed between Ludhiana and Calcutta) similar to the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor.”

She announced plans for “productive use” of her ministry’s “land banks” — railway land lying unused — by industry. “This will help in early start of industrial projects.”

The proposed factory at Kanchrapara-Halishahar will have the capacity to manufacture 500 coaches every year and will be set up as a public-private partnership (PPP).

“There is a very high demand for EMU and Metro coaches and capacity addition is an immediate requirement,” Mamata said.

Railway officials said there was enough land at the complex for the factory.

Bhaskar Chaudhuri, former chief commercial manager of Eastern Railway, said: “With a number of new trains announced and the need for replacement of old coaches, there will be a huge demand for new coaches. So there is a need for new production units.”

The Adra power plant will create jobs for local tribals. Power department sources said some 2,000 unskilled labourers would be needed to set up the plant, another PPP project.

Railway sources said the ministry was looking for potential partners and would start talks with the National Thermal Power Corporation.

Officials said that since Adra was a divisional headquarters of South Eastern Railway, the railways had enough land there for the plant. “This project is of great importance as it would be located in an under-developed area and will help in providing employment and bringing the tribal people into the mainstream,” Mamata said, a remark loaded with political significance after the Lalgarh agitation and crackdown.

“The entire power generated by the plant will be used by the railways. But since the railways do not have their own distribution grid, they will have to use national grids,” a railway official said.

The CPM’s Basudev Acharya, who headed the just-dissolved House standing committee on railways, denied that the railways had enough land in Adra for the plant.

“The plant will require about 1,000 acres, which is not available with the railways at Adra. It will need to acquire land,” he said. “Mamata is opposing the power plant in Katwa on the issue of land acquisition but is doing it for a railway project.”

Acharya had proposed that the existing wagon repair shop at Adra be converted into a manufacturing unit.

Mamata told Parliament: “There is a growing demand for wagons; so we propose to initiate the process of taking over the wagon units of Burn Standard and Braithwaite.”

During 2009-10, the railways plan to acquire 18,000 wa-gons compared with 11,000 in 2008-09. If some of the orders go to these two firms, new jobs could be created in these factories.

This could also save jobs in the factories of these companies’ numerous suppliers from the Hooghly-Asansol industrial belt.

The CPM trade unions that once ruled this belt are already feeling the heat. Burn Standard officials said: “Unions and workers are shifting loyalties to Trinamul. It’s a political tectonic shift in this region.”