Calcutta, June 1 :     The Emami group has offered Rs 58 crore for an outright purchase of the abandoned Jay Engineering land on Prince Anwar Shah Road, twice the base price fixed by the West Bengal government. However, Emami will pay that price only if it is allowed to develop the land into a modern residential complex. If the state government accepts Emami?s offer, it will have to go back on its policy statement that surplus land of sick industries in the state will be used to set up new industries and not for house building or other real estate projects. The state government is acting as an agent of the Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR) in pushing through the land sale to raise funds to revive the sick Jay Engineering. With ITC already out of the race because of the inadequate size of the land for its new factory complex, the government?s tender is yet to attract a bid matching even its base price from anyone seeking to set up a non-polluting industry on that land. The total size of the Jay Engineering plot is nearly 30 acres. The state government has already committed a little over 9 acres to Tamil Nadu?s Apollo Hospitals Ltd. The tender sale covers 20 acres of land. R.S. Agarwal, the Emami group joint chairman, said he is interested in the property provided the state government does not make any specific land use stipulation. Emami, he said, had spoken to top Indian architects and also some designer firms in Singapore to make a land development plan. Despite the attractive bait of a hefty bid, it is a politically sensitive decision. Officials of the industrial and reconstruction (I&R) ministry refrained from any comment. They said the committee headed by I&R secretary Sunil Mitra had yet to make its recommendations.