Bengal chief minister Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday said the proposed deep-sea port at Tajpur in Purba Medinipur district was no longer feasible due to the unavailability of government land and that an alternative site at nearby Dadanpatrabar had been proposed for the project.
The CM said the state government had discussed the matter with Karan Adani, managing director of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ), during a meeting on Wednesday.
"I had a meeting with Karan Adani regarding the Tajpur deep-sea port. The Adani Group had already exited the project because it was not feasible, as the government had no land. I had said this repeatedly earlier that the port was never feasible until there is rail connectivity, warehouse facilities and several thousand acres of land," Adhikari told reporters at the state secretariat.
The CM said an evaluation carried out by the department concerned under industry secretary Vandana Yadav, as per the guidance of chief secretary Manoj Agarwal, found that "no port was possible there".
"There is no government land available in Tajpur. Therefore, it is not possible to set up a deep-sea port there," Adhikari said.
"But, we are not disheartening the people of the state. As an alternative, we have proposed Dadanpatrabar, around 10 km from Tajpur, where a salt factory once existed. Around 1,700 acres are available, and the site has been suggested to Karan Adani. A final decision will be taken later," Adhikari said following a meeting with Union Minister for Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal and MoS Shantanu Thakur at the state secretariat.
"We are ready for the revenue sharing with the central government," he emphasised.
The proposed project at Tajpur had originally been conceived during the erstwhile Trinamool Congress government.
The greenfield port was envisaged with an investment of around Rs 15,000 crore, while associated infrastructure development was expected to attract an additional investment of nearly Rs 10,000 crore.
The project had been awarded to the Adani Group through a competitive bidding process.
In October 2022, then Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee handed over the Letter of Intent (LoI) for the project to Karan Adani.
However, despite repeated discussions and expectations surrounding the proposed port, the project failed to make significant progress.
While the previous state government never officially stated that the Adani Group had withdrawn from the project, sources in the state secretariat indicated that Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd (APSEZ), the highest bidder, was awaiting mandatory clearances from the Union ministries of Home, Defence, External Affairs and Shipping, a bureaucrat said.
The bureaucrat also suggested that the company was unable to fulfil all the conditions required for obtaining the clearances, resulting in delays in the project's execution.
"The issue has now been revived under the present state government, with discussions focusing on shifting the proposed deep-sea port to Dadanpatrabar," he told PTI on condition of anonymity.
The former Bengal cabinet formally terminated the earlier arrangement with the Adani Group in June 2025 and approved fresh bidding for the project, bringing nearly four years of engagement with APSEZ to an end.
A new global tender was subsequently issued in December 2025, offering a 99-year concession period along with around 1,000 acres earmarked for port-linked industrial development. The tender was later cancelled by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), the state's nodal investment agency.