Nellore: Kisan SEZ yet to take off even after 27 yrs

Nellore: The Kisan Special Economic Zone promoted by Iffco at Kodavalur for which land was allotted about 27 years back is still lying idle. The SEZ promoters failed to establish even its own Nano Fertilisers unit due to legal tangles.

The Government had handed over the land to Iffco for a fertiliser factory way back in 1994 for promoting the zone. The proposal was set aside due to the increasing cost of naphtha, which was the base to run the unit then.

Iffco came out with a proposal to establish Kisan SEZ in 2008 during the regime of YS Rajasekhar Reddy. Though the Kisan SEZ is meant for agriculture-based industries, the land was allotted to different industrial units since it was a multi-product SEZ. But the response from the farm-based industries was lukewarm. The situation led the management to allocate land to a renewable energy unit, warehousing, cold storage and even an auto steel production industry besides a beverages unit of Coca Cola subsequently. The management also failed to promote industrial units in the SEZ as intended. Iffco could not start its own nano-urea production unit to expand the commercial scale of production in the denotified area of the SEZ spread across about 20 acres with a production capacity of the proposed unit of one lakh bottles of 500 ml per day due to legal tangles.

The expected capital investment was about Rs 250 crore which had to be completed within 12 months from the zero date. Still, SEZ officials are pinning their hopes on quick disposal of cases to establish their own unit and allot land to those approaching them for starting units. 

In fact, some local farmers and politicians approached the court against the SEZ charging that they had not paid compensation to the 1,009.85 acres belonging to a temple apart from a few assigned lands and obtained a stay against further alienation of the land in 2017.

The SEZ claims that they have purchased the land at market value and deposited market value to the temple lands because there was a row between Revenue and Endowment departments over the

rights on the land.

Because of legal disputes many industrial units that planned to open their units shifted to other places.

Central Railside Warehouse Corporation, ArcelorMittal Auto Steel, Sun and Sand Africa Ltd, Renaissance India Limited, a South Korea-based Electrical Vehicle unit, Indus Coffee and ATG Tyres (Okinawa group, Japan) among several others that moved away.