Losing steam

Looks like the West Bengal government’s grand plan to reuse about 11,000 acres in the possession of over 400 shuttered firms for industrialisation will not take off after all. No unit with over 500 acres has come forward to lease out the plots, it is learnt. It was exactly a year ago that the state government had amended the West Bengal Land Reforms Act, 1955, to enable owners of shut factories to lease out their plots to investors once they received clearances from the land and land reforms department. Only about 10 units have shown interest. In 2015 also the state government had made a similar attempt by setting up a Group of Ministers to figure out how much land could be made available for industrialisation; but that too had fizzled out.