Sept. 21: Over 100 landlosers have started an agitation in Birbhum to protest against the state government's plan to promote real estate on a 300-acre plot that was originally marked out for industrial units near Bolpur.
Gitabitan, barely 2km from Rabindranath Tagore's Visva-Bharati, was conceived as a theme-based smart city by Mamata Banerjee who named it after the voluminous collection of the bard's songs.
The noise coming from Gitabitan has worried a section of officials about the fate of five other smart cities the chief minister had planned as the protests could scare away prospective investment in these.
The landlosers today gathered outside the boundary wall of the project and shouted that they would not let the government use the land for real estate because they had given their plots in the hope of seeing industry and employment for future generations.
"We will not allow the government to use the land for any real estate business," Mir Amzad Ali, from nearby Nurpur village whose 2.6 acres had been acquired, said.
"We had parted with the land despite poor compensation as we were given assurance that the land would be used for industry and jobs would be created for local youths," he said.
The former Left Front government had acquired the 300 acres for an industrial park at Shibpur.
After coming to power, the previous Trinamul government changed the plan and decided to set up an IT hub there. This was later tweaked to make way for Mamata's theme-based smart city Gitabitan on 131 acres. The rest of the land would be for the IT hub.
After the Supreme Court order to return plots to Singur's landlosers on August 31, protests started in other parts of Bengal where farmers said they wanted their land back.
Pre-empting a protest at the Birbhum smart city project site, on September 8 urban development secretary Debasis Sen visited the spot and told district officials to arrange for electricity and water connections. Sen said the government would sell off land parcels measuring four to six cottahs each to interested individuals as early as possible. Along with the plots, the government would hand over sanctioned construction plans to the buyers. Today's agitation was what the state government had tried to pre-empt.
Mamata had announced six smart cities after the Centre did not include any of Bengal's urban areas in the first phase of its smart city project. The state's projects were to be in Siliguri, Bolpur, Asansol-Dugrapur, Gazoldoba, Garia and Kalyani.
The agitation in Bolpur has state officials worried for two reasons. First, all the plots where the projects have been planned, were originally acquired for industry. If the agitation spreads to other areas, the smart city projects would run into rough weather.
Second, if the agitation starts spreading, the government would find it difficult to get private investors. "None of the investors will pump in money.... I think the government should get in touch with the agitators in Bolpur to nip the problem in the bud," said a senior Nabanna official.
The agitation against the real estate project has also raised several eyebrows in the state administration as many feel that real estate is the only sector where the state can expect private investment. "It is the only sector where at least some investment is coming.... If this sector faces problems too, state's economy would face more trouble," another official said.
Sources in the labour department said investments in real estate have created some employment in the unorganised sector in Bengal. A rough estimate suggests that over 5 per cent jobs have increased in Bengal over four years in the unorganised sector mainly because of construction-related work.
