Bengal is likely to have 7-8 new international land ports bordering Bangladesh and Nepal to ease the movement of cargo and people between India and its neighbours, a senior government official said.
The facilities dotting the borders will be developed by the Land Ports Authority of India (LPAI), a body reporting to the Union ministry of home affairs. As of now, Bengal has one land port at Petrapole, near Bongaon on the Indo-Bangladesh border.
Some of the locations which have been identified for land port development are Panitanki in North Bengal at the Indo-Nepal border, Ghojadanga in North 24-Paragans on the Indo-Bangla border, Hili in Dinajpur and Birpara in Alipurduar, among others.
While LPAI has been seeking to convert some of these locations, where trade is taking place in the presence of land customs stations, to a modern port infrastructure with terminals for smooth passage of vehicle movement for months, the absence of a requisite land parcel at the border has been holding up development.
However, with better alignment of the state and the Centre with the formation of the BJP government in Bengal, LPAI is hoping to overcome the land problems.
“We are looking to set up 7-8 land ports in Bengal. Each of them would require 50 acres of area on an average, but the location has to be on the border,” Jayant Singh, chairman of LPAI, said on the sidelines of a CII event in Calcutta.
A land port would typically consist of several facilities — cargo handling space, parking, warehouse, cold storage, immigration, customs and Border Security Force — under one roof.
The Bengal facilities are part of a plan to build 74 additional land ports across the country, taking the tally from 15 as of now.
Total trade with neighbouring countries stood at ₹2,27,522 crore, out of which trade worth ₹82,844 crore was conducted through land ports.
However, the government estimates that land borders have a potential for another ₹4,44,167 crore worth of untapped trade.