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| Deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi with Kumar Shray at 1 Polo Road in Patna on Tuesday. Picture by Deepak Kumar |
Patna, May 22: If chief minister Nitish Kumar is serious about investments coming in, he should hear out the travail of Kumar Shray.
Shray, 30, is an UK-returned entrepreneur who has been trying to set up an Indian-made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottling plant in the state for the past two years.
The businessman landed up at the janata darbar of deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi today to narrate his plight at a time when the government is claiming to have created the right atmosphere for investors.
“I have been successfully running liquor industries in Himachal Pradesh. But here my venture has not taken off though I have been running from pillar to post. My papers are stuck in the red tape of the state’s bureaucracy,” Shray told Modi.
Shray, along with a partner, has purchased private land in Bishnupur village of Vaishali district to set up a liquor bottling plant in the name of Iceland Beverage Pvt Ltd with an investment of Rs 3 crore.
Shray told The Telegraph about the hurdles he faced. “First, I had to spend more than six months to acquire land. When I approached Bihar Industrial Area Development Authority (Biada), they said land is not available in Vaishali. After three months, they gave me land in Giddha Industrial Area in Bhojpur district. But I wanted my business to be in Patna which has better connectivity. So I asked them to give me land in districts like Vaishali but they rejected that. Finally, I purchased private land to go ahead with the business,” said Shray, a resident of Kankerbagh who has an MBA degree from the University of Hertfordshire in the UK.
“After completing all the paperwork, I approached State Investment Promotion Board (SIPB) in April for approval because without their certificate, it is not possible to start business. Over here, I am facing a lot of problem in clearance of papers from different departments,” he said.
“Meanwhile, the excise department asked for the opinion of the law department on whether I can go ahead with the proposal or not. It took another three months to get a positive response. The excise department is not co-operating in issuing the letter of intent which is basically a legal agreement to execute the work,” he said.
“The excise department has written a letter to the superintendent of excise, Vaishali, enquiring if they have enough people to monitor the liquor bottling unit. But still I have to get the SIPB approval. When I started my business in Himachal, it just took 10 days to get the SIPB certificate but over here it has been a horrible experience,” Shray said.
In Gujarat, run by Narendra Modi with whom Nitish has an unstated competition for the top political prize in the country, clearances for setting up business units take about a month, or even less.
Shray today decided to meet deputy chief minister Modi at his weekly darbar at 1, Polo Road. He waited for two hours, sitting in one corner of the darbar before he could place his problem.
“Sir, for the past two years I am running here and there, visiting the offices and meeting officials of the industry and excise departments. But so far I have not got any support for my plan to up set a liquor bottling unit in Bihar,” said Shray.
The investor though didn’t get much of a response from Modi. “Setting up a foreign liquor unit is a long-drawn process. The janata darbar is not the appropriate forum to settle such enterprises. I cannot help you out here,” was the terse reply from Modi.
Modi later told The Telegraph, that a lot of “non-serious people”, who were not aware about the processes and functioning of departments, wanted to invest in the state. “Without an SIPB certificate, we cannot do anything,” he said.
Shray, who left a comfortable job in Birmingham to try and do business in his home state, said he was shocked by the government’s response. “Instead of supporting us, they (officials) are giving us the cold-shoulder. If this is the attitude, why would anyone come here to invest?”