Click to play videoKolkata: The West Bengal government on Monday scrapped its third major industry project - the proposed Information Technology (IT) Township in Rajarhat - after Singur and Nandigram.
The fire at the Vedic Village Resort near Kolkata two weeks back has consumed more than just the resort as the Bengal government scrapped the proposed 1600 acre IT Township being built in collaboration with the same developer, the Vedic Realty group.
Violence at Vedic Village Resort exposed alleged land grabs by the group. The government has already informed through a public notice IT majors Wipro and Infosys of the decision to scrap the project.
"I think it is a very sad day for West Bengal that they are aborting this project. This project would have created a large number of jobs," says Mohandas Pai, Infosys HR head.
Following the violence Vedic Realty's Managing Director Raj Kishore Modi was arrested on charges of involving the land mafia in procuring land from farmers.
Arms were also recovered from the resort premises. The government immediately started scrutinising the 600 acres of land to be transferred by the developer as part of the deal.
"Each and every inch of land which will be transferred to the government... we will check whether it has a proper title, whether it has a legal owner," West Bengal IT Minister Debesh Das had told CNN-IBN a few days ago.
But then finally following vociferous demands within the Communist Party of India-Marxist state leadership the government decided to go ahead and scrap the deal setting back the state's IT prospects a long way.
Like in Nandigram and Singur, the scrapping of the Rajarhat IT Township is likely to remain as a thorn in the government's feet in its baby steps to industrialisation.
It also proves that like in the earlier occasions some decisions the government took to materialise the industrialisation vision weren't exactly prudent.
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