West Bengal to scrap Urban Land Ceiling Act for industrial growth

West Bengal's first Bharatiya Janata Party government is going to scrap the Urban Land Ceiling Act, which capped private land ownership requiring state acquisition of excess vacant land and creating a barrier to the large-scale industrialisation in the state.

"We have taken certain important initiatives in terms of reform. We will scrap the land ceiling act which is the recurrent demand from the industry," finance minister Swapan Dasgupta said Friday at an event in Kolkata, organised by Bengal Chamber of Commerce & Industry (BCCI).

The announcement came within a week of his budget proposals where he declared the plan to re-examine the act to unlock the potential of developable land.

"West Bengal is the only major state where Urban Land Ceiling policy is being implemented. This has been a major investment bottleneck which hampers large scale institutional investments. I hereby announce that the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act,1976 will be re-examined to unlock the potential of developable land, attract major investments and fuel economic growth in urban areas," Dasgupta had said in the budget.

On Friday, he unequivocally said that urban land ceiling act would be discarded.

It was enacted in 1976 to prevent the concentration of vacant urban land in the hands of a few.

Historical land acquisition struggles in West Bengal — rooted in anti-acquisition movements — prompted the previous Trinamool government to adopt a hands-off policy.

To be sure, the state also has chunks of unused and run-down industrial land parcels but these were never explored for industrial uses.

"There is a scope in Kolkata to unlock the huge amount of derelict industrial land that is lying idle," Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of prime minister's economic advisory council, said at the event, co-hosted by The Delhi Council, an initiative of BCCI.

He said that moving outside Kolkata can always be explored but the initial focus should be using the derelict industrial land without "unnecessarily" encroaching Bengal's multi-crop agricultural land.

"Kolkata should be developed as a concentrated business hub," he said.

The state's industry minister Tapas Roy told industrialists and business leaders present at the event that the government is committed to make ease of doing business a reality. "We shall provide transparent policies, simplify procedures, reduce compliance burdens," he promised.