The Bahujan Samaj Party government in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday decided to recommend to the Centre the scrapping of the Special Economic Zone for the Anil Ambani-led Reliance group for 'breaching the rules.'
A decision to this effect was taken in Lucknow at the meeting of the state cabinet chaired by UP Chief Minister Mayawati in the first major setback to the previous Mulayam Singh Yadav government.
The UP cabinet, before reaching the decision, discussed the lapses in allotting 1,200 acres of land to the Anil Ambani group at Noida.
The SEZ is yet to get the central government's approval, but the UP government has decided to go ahead with its recommendation to scrap it.
Meanwhile, the state government has constituted a high-level committee, headed by the Industrial Development Commissioner, to give its report -- within 2 weeks -- on each proposal of the previous government on hi-tech cities, SEZs and other IT projects.
In another major move, the UP government ordered that from now on the government will not acquire land for any project and investors will have to deal with the landowners or farmers to purchase land.
The decision was taken in the wake of the farmers' agitation over the Dadri power project of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance group for which land was allotted during the previous regime in UP.
Briefing mediapersons, state cabinet secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh said that as per rules SEZ can only be established on a continuous piece of land, having one entry and one exit point.
''But the Reliance SEZ was found to have been proposed on two pieces of land with a road dividing both the plots,'' he said. He stated that this was against the norms.
A high-level committee had found these lapses and hence the government has decided to recommend the irregularities to the Centre, he added.
Reliance was among 14 other investors whose proposals for SEZs were sent to the Centre by the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in January, but following protests in different parts of the country over land acquisition, the Centre has not approved any new SEZs so far.
