Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy

If the exit of Nano was about the “bad M” and the “good M”, the proposed railway locomotive component unit in Majherhat could be about “M & M” joining hands to keep the project in Bengal.

Union minister of state for shipping Mukul Roy has come to the rescue of his party boss, railway minister Mamata Banerjee, with the locomotive production unit hitting a land hurdle that could have derailed the project.

“Calcutta Port Trust (which is under Roy’s ministry) will provide 30 acres to the railways for the factory. This stretch of land was lying unused; so we decided to hand it over to the railways,” Roy told Metro on Thursday.

The production unit was one of the main proposals in Mamata’s rail budget. But a survey revealed that the railways did not have enough land to set up the factory. “Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of the project but we benefited from the fact that a Trinamul leader is now the Union minister of state for shipping,” an official said.

The port trust had turned down a request by South Eastern Railway in 2003-04 to provide land for a proposed passenger terminal, sources said.

Railway officials fear no such problems this time with joint surveys already done. “The other formalities are in the final stages. The land belongs to the central government, which means it can legally be used for a central project. It will merely change hands,” said minister Roy.

A senior official in New Delhi said the project could start by the end of the year if the land was made available to the railways soon.

The other Bengal-specific projects on Mamata’s radar include an eastern industrial corridor alongside the eastern dedicated freight corridor proposed between Ludhiana and Calcutta. “That will be similar to the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor, provided we don’t run into problems while acquiring land,” said an official.

A coach manufacturing factory at Kanchrapara-Halishahar, a midlife coach rehabilitation unit at Noapara and an electric locomotive-component manufacturing unit at Dankuni have also been proposed in the rail budget. All these projects will be implemented through public-private partnerships, sources said.

Senior railway officials are scheduled to meet in the city on Friday to formalise the projects. “Expressions of interest will be issued soon after,” an official said.