UNI
Lucknow. May 25: As the first major setback to the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav government, Bahujan Samaj Party government in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday decided to recommend to the Centre scrapping the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for the Anil Ambani led Reliance group for breaching the rule.
A decision to this effect was taken here at the meeting of the state cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Mayawati.
The cabinet before reaching the decision discussed the lapses in alloting 1200 acre of land to Reliance Industry at Noida.
However, the SEZ of the Reliance is yet to get the Centre's approval but the UP government decided to go ahead with its recommendation to scrap it.
Meanwhile, the state government has constituted a high level committee headed by Industrial Development Commissioner (IDC) to give its report on each and every proposals of the previous government on the Hi-tech cities, SEZs and other IT projects within 2 weeks.
In another major decision, the government also ordered that from now on government will not acquire land for any project and the investors would have to deal with the land owners or farmers to purchase their land.
The decision was taken in wake of the faremars' agitation over Dadri power project of the Reliance for which the land was alloted to Anil Ambani group during the previous regime in UP.
Briefing mediapersons, the state cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said as per the rule SEZ can only be established in continous piece of land with having one entry and one exit points.
''But in the case of Reliance SEZ it was found that it was two piece of land with a road dividing both the plots to be used for the purpose,'' he said adding that it was against the norms.
A high-level committee had found the lapses and hence the government has decided to recommend the irregularities to the Centre, he added.
Reliance Industries were among the 14 other investors whose proposal for the SEZs were sent to the Centre by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in January last, but after the protests at different parts of the country over the land acquisation of the farmers, Centre had not approved the new SEZs so far.