Another Congress-Maya land row in Rae Bareli?

The centre and the UP Govt could be heading for another showdown and this time too, it’s over a project in Rae Bareli. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Nov 10, 2008, 01:19:48 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

The centre and the Uttar Pradesh government could be heading for another showdown and this time too, it’s over a project in Rae Bareli — Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s constituency. The state government has failed to provide land for an automobile testing centre even a year after the Centre made a request for it.

Last month, the state government had cancelled the allotment of land for a rail coach factory in Rae Bareli, only to revoke its decision after a war of words between the Congress-led Union government and Chief Minister Mayawati.

A year after the Ministry of Heavy Industries made a request for land for the automobile centre, the state has still not acquired land for it. During the period, six other states have made land available for similar projects.

According to government officials, the ministry even deposited a token amount with the state government.

“There has been no forward movement in the land acquisition process… even after a couple of meetings,” a senior government official, who didn’t wish to be identified, said.

When contacted, the Chief Minister’s Office said the project had not been cancelled, but couldn’t give reasons for the delay in acquiring land.

The Centre had asked the UP government in the middle of last year to acquire land for

the Rs 86-crore tractor and off-road vehicles testing centre as well as an accident data analysis centre at Rai Bareli.

“Union government officials even identified sites for the two projects. The state government is yet to take concrete action to implement them,” UP Congress Committee spokesman Akhilesh Pratap Singh said.

The state government refunded the money deposited by the ministry, without saying if the land would be acquired.

“The future of the projects hangs in the balance in the absence of any concrete reply from the state government,” a ministry official told the Planning Commission last week.

Work on automobile testing centres in Manesar (Haryana), Chennai, Pune, Indore, Ahmednagar (Gujarat) and Silchar (Assam) has already started, the official said. These projects are worth Rs 1,718 crore.

If the centre comes up at Rae Bareli, it would be the first such facility in the state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Follow India news real-time updates and the latest news covered on Hindustan Times, featuring today's critical updates on Sonam Wangchuk Hunger Strike LIVE and more across India.