Business office:

They – the government of Maharashtra, politicians from different parties and the administration – have promised fantastic industrial growth, a great increase in employment, fantastic prosperity for the city and the underdevelopment region. Twenty years later, only 54 industrial companies are operating at Nagpur’s Multi-modal International Hub – MIHAN – out of a total of 102 to which land has been allocated. The others simply failed to start their operations. This is the story of the prestigious and ambitious Nagpur project. This is the story of a complete failure of a highly publicized and highly publicized project for the second capital of Maharashtra. It’s the story of how a seemingly good project fell flat from the start because even after a lapse of two decades, it still teeters in almost every way. If the statistical detail shows how only 54 companies started their operations in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone (SEZ) and 48 could not cite various reasons, it also shows how the authorities could not exert appropriate pressure on wandering units and force them to fulfill their own obligations. promises. The factual record that was released after even a superficial investigation by “The Hitavada” shows that the MIHAN-SEZ project became a laughing stock for the people because it was fundamentally poorly planned, and embellished with big speeches and big promises by the state government. Over the past twenty years, nothing has worked – and the project is on full display as a complete failure. Instead of changing the face of the city and region, MIHAN is now trying to hide or save face from the dirty eyes of the public. Some of the companies have either backed off citing different reasons, while many companies’ Letters of Approval (LoA) have expired. In many other cases, the authorities issued notices to companies requesting the cancellation of their authorization to operate in the SEZ.

The Development Commissioner or the Board of Approvals (BoA) grants LoAs which are essential for companies to operate in the SEZ. MIHAN-SEZ’s development commissioner, Sraman Vasireddy, confirmed the figures of companies that started their activities and those that did not. “Some of the companies have opted for detachment (withdrawal from operations after obtaining permission to start operating) while the LoAs of some units have expired. Apart from this, we have recently sent notices to 31 companies requesting the cancellation of their LoAs,” he told “The Hitavada”. Companies whose LoAs have been canceled for one reason or another can start operations in the SEZ. In this case, “however , these companies will have to pay a penalty and give a valid reason for the delay,” Sraman Vasireddy said. However, sources said that some of the companies considering restarting operations oppose the additional financial burden in the form of a penalty. “On the contrary, some of them are asking for concessions,” they said. The authorities no longer want to offer concessions to errant companies. The SEZ, spread over 1,500 acres in the MIHAN project , has already offered massive concessions to units on property tax, stamp duty and electricity tariff, among others. When the project was launched, policymakers, government officials and others predicted that it would accelerate industrial growth in the region and open up huge employment opportunities. For reasons the state government may want to avoid in the public eye, none of the screenings appear to have delivered on their promise.

Instead of admitting failure and investigating the real and genuine reasons for it, the state government seems interested in dodging the issue somehow. In fact, the government of Maharashtra launched special purpose vehicles like the Maharashtra Airport Development Company Limited (MADC) in 2002 to develop the multimodal Nagpur International Airport. The MADC is a developer which, with other co-developers, builds infrastructure in the region. Despite such an elaborate administrative infrastructure and mechanism, the MIHAN project has not even started to any real extent. There is no doubt that many units already operating in the SEZ are truly internationally renowned big-budget companies – for example, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys, HCL, Globallogic, Lupin, Patanjali, Reliance Defense… ! There are also prestigious government projects such as the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM). But these entities fail to live up to the initial promises made by the state government – keeping the story incomplete.