UNION MINISTRY OF COMMERCE CLEARED TO DENOTIFY THE 3 SEZ'S: SHANTARAM NAIK

PANJIM: Decks have now been cleared for the Union Ministry of Commerce to denotify the three notified SEZs in Goa, said Mr Shantaram Naik, MP, who has been vigorously pursuing the issue of denotification for the last two years.

In a statement, issued, on Saturday, Mr Naik expressed his happiness over the judgement pronounced by the division bench of Bombay High Court at Goa declaring allotment of land to the SEZ developers in Goa as illegal.

He said, "In the talks that the three developers of notified SEZs had with the then Union Minister of Commerce, Mr Kamal Nath about two years back, they had indicated to Mr Nath in presence of the Chief Minister, Mr Digambar Kamat, myself and South Goa MP, Mr Francisco Sardinha that they were willing to give up their SEZ proposals as they were convinced of the Commerce Minister’s argument that they cannot go on with the SEZ in Goa against the wishes of the people and the government."

The MP pointed out that the developers thereafter cunningly filed petitions in the court when in fact they were supposed to discuss the matter of compensation or some alternate smaller plot for non-SEZ activity as one of the developers had suggested to the minister.

He further said that, to the misfortune of Goa, Union Commerce Ministry took a stand that they would wait for the disposal of the pending petitions, even though there was clear assurance to Goa delegation that the three SEZs would be denotified after the minister accepted his argument that as per law, authority which had power to notify had, an inherent power to denotify, although under SEZ Act there was no specific power to denotify an SEZ.

Mr Naik said that he argued with Mr Anand Sharma who had taken over the Commerce Ministry that there was no order of injunction issued against the Union Government by the division bench restraining them from denotifying the said three SEZs but Mr Sharma did not appear to be in a mood to do anything while petitions on the subject were pending in the court.

He said that he would meet the Commerce Minister, Mr Sharma on Monday and insist on issuing the notifications to denotify the three SEZs.

It may be recalled that state of Goa had requested the Commerce Minister to denotify the said three SEZs after an agitation started in Goa as the people of the state realised that SEZ developers were only interested in land grabing without any assurance to give jobs to Goans.

It was also discovered that the area of land that they sought was many times more than their actual requirement thus indicating that the developers had a hidden plan to use most of the land for commercial purpose. (NT)