Land relaxation policy a significant move: Feedback Infra

Vinayak Chatterjee, chairman, Feedback Infra, says that the land relaxation policy by the government is a welcome and a significant move. This move will cut the project development cycle by six months.

Below is the edited transcript of his interview to CNBC-TV18. Q: How material is land relaxation policy which is announced by the government where there is no need of going to cabinet every time you need a project to be cleared?
A: This is a welcome and significant development. One arm of the government giving land to another arm of the government to build projects was stuck for many months because of this rule of taking proposal to the cabinet for approval.
Now, even PPP projects are not required to go for a cabinet nod. In India, for a proposal it takes three-nine months to get cabinet nod. So, this move will cut the project development cycle by six months. Q: So, will it cut time by six months but what is the most immediate impact likely to be because we heard from the railway ward chairman that now our plans to monetize railway land is going to be fast tracked or at least move forward. What do you see as being the most immediate impact?
A: Step one, the railways will be certainly impacted because they had been mentioning in their annual and 12th plan document about using significant revenues from use of surplus railway land. Step two, they also have major plans to redevelop New Delhi, Mumbai and around five-seven other stations, five of them have been announced by the Prime Minister two weeks ago. The railways will be the immediate beneficiary. After that ports and lastly the metro rail projects happening different part of India like Cochin and Jaipur. Q: The government is keen to push ahead with the land acquisition and rehabilitation bill perhaps could be taken up in the monsoon session of Parliament itself. Given what we are seeing with this particular move and the fact that Jairam Ramesh has made it very clear, they will not accept most of the recommendations of the standing committee. Do you believe that we are likely to see the land bill passing through this session?
A: I think we will. The land bill is coming up for the cabinet discussions next week before being put up for entry into the Parliament. The current directive from the PMO has nothing to do with the land bill, because the land bill is about acquiring fresh land from farmers, whereas this one is passing on of government land from one arm of the government to the other.
But as Jairam Ramesh rightly said from the infrastructure sector, we are a little different. For us even in the land bill, infrastructure is considered eminent domain along with defense, but we have made our opinion very clear in two areas.
One, there should be no concept of linear infrastructure. Somewhere along the line the Parliamentary Committee said that it would allow eminent domain only for linear infrastructure, which is railway track, highways etc. which does not make sense because the power plant or a port is not linear, it could be circular or elliptical or other shape.
Second, the Parliamentary Committee said that it would not allow it for PPP, that argument should not have arisen in the first place, because PPP is a partnership between the government and the private industry. So, I think we have made our objections clear and we have also informally understood that both these suggestions are acceptable to the government and Jairam Ramesh and others, so we don’t expect to see constraining ideas in the bill.