State receives Rs 33.43 crore as dividend from joint venture

The state Housing department has bagged a dividend of Rs 33.43 crore on Wednesday against its 26 percent share in a joint venture with a consortium of real estate developers.

The joint venture company named Bengal NRI Complex Limited had taken up a project of developing 40 to 45-storeyed buildings and bunglows on a plot of 65 acre.

The total dividend that the state government has got out of the project till date since 2011 stands at around Rs 57.51 crore.

Sovan Chatterjee, the state Housing Minister, on Wednesday received the cheque from Mayank Jalan, managing director, and Rahul Todi, director of Bengal NRI Complex Limited.

The handing over of the cheque took place at the office of the Housing department in the New Secretariat building.

Chatterjee said: "This is the highest ever dividend that the state has received for a share in a joint venture." He further added that the project was taken up in 1994. But for various reasons, it remained stalled. Finally, the work started in full swing six years back. Now, a major part of the project is complete and the state government has also started receiving the dividend. In this project with brand name Urbana, two 40-storeyed buildings and five 45-storeyed buildings have been developed on around 30 acre of land. There are total 1,170 apartments in the buildings. Under the same project, 53 bungalows are also coming up on around 25 acre of land. At present, around 100 families have started staying in the residential apartments. Interestingly, there are more than 2,500 full grown trees in the complex and it consists of 78 percent open space.