Patanjali’s mega food park to also take off
It is likely to be completed within three years of the launch
LUCKNOW: Patanjali’s ₹ 6,000-crore mega food park, proposed to be set up on 425 acres of land along the Yamuna Expressway, will finally be a part of the groundbreaking ceremony to be presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi here this weekend, after Baba Ramdev’s herbal company threatened to shift the project out of UP last month.
This may be the state’s first mega food park to see the light of the day in the next couple of years, after sanction for the Amethi mega food park was cancelled around three years ago on some technical grounds.
“The ground-breaking ceremony will also see the launch of Patanjali’s mega food park proposed to be set up in Greater Noida,” said principal secretary, horticulture, Sudhir Garg. The project might be completed within three years after the launch, he said.
According to Garg, the Yamuna Expressway Authority had made the land available for the project which was sanctioned by the Central government.
The Centre would provide subsidy for setting up the project.
Baba Ramdev’s Haridwarbased company had signed an MoU with the UP government for setting up the food park in the state during the investors’ summit in February this year.
The project, however, appeared to have run into rough weather suddenly when the company’s managing director, Acharya Balkrishna threatened to move the project out of UP as he was miffed over the state government not allowing his company to transfer plots to its other subsidiaries in Greater Noida.
Not willing to let the investment
go, the Yogi Adityanath government acted promptly and decided through a cabinet meeting in the first week of June to transfer the plots comprising the allotted land to its subsidiary companies in Greater Noida.
Patanjai’s is among the three mega food parks that the Central government has sanctioned for UP in March this year. The two others were the Vindhyachal Attivo Food Park in Mirzapur and the Infrastructure Alliance (India) Private Ltd in Mathura.
The central government provides a subsidy of ₹50 crore to each mega food park that typically consists of a chain of modern infrastructure, collection/ processing centre, cold chain, 30-35 fully developed plots to set up processing units and comprehensive ‘farm to plate’ supply chain. The project of setting a beverage plant by a private company on Kursi Road in Lucknow would also be launched.