State govt to develop Tajpur port on its own: Mamata

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said the state will develop the Tajpur deep sea port on its own, as the Centre has done "nothing" to start work on the project in the past three years.

The state government has a 26:74 share with the Centre in the project in West Midnapore district.

"We have decided to develop Tajpur as a port on our own. We had earlier decided to undertake the project with the Centre but the latter has been sitting idle for three years. Hence, we have decided to build the port on our own. We are now discussing the modalities like project cost and the time for commencement of work," said the Chief Minister while leaving Nabanna.

The state government has also received necessary clearance for developing Kulpi port which will be a riverine one. "Both the projects at Tajpur and Kulpi will be a game-changer as it will be generating huge employment," state Industry and Finance minister Amit Mitra said.

He further informed that an agency has already been engaged to study the proposed project in detail. "A decision has been taken to develop the port by the state government and a notification in this regard has been issued recently. The official procedure for intimidating the Centre about our decision has begun," Mitra added.

Initially, the state government had decided to develop two ports, one at Tajpur and another at Sagar. But the Centre raised viability concerns over the development of a port at Sagar following which the proposal was scrapped and a decision was taken to go ahead with the deep sea port at Tajpur as a joint venture with the Centre.

As per the original plan, the state government had wanted to build Tajpur as a private port on the lines of Mundra, Pipavav, Krishnapatnam, Kattupalli, Dhamra, Karaikal and Gangavaram among others, wherein a private firm will be awarded the concession to build and operate the new port for 30-50 years through a public auction.

It was further decided that Rs 12,000 crore would be needed to build back-up infrastructure such as roads, bridges and rail lines to evacuate cargo for the proposed Tajpur port.

To a question, the Chief Minister added that the state government has decided to shift IT companies located in the Bantala Leather Complex to the Silicon Valley IT Hub at New Town.