Ground-levelling for Tata's Gopalpur SEZ by Dec

The land leveling and boundary wall construction work of the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) being set up by Tata Steel at Gopalpur in south Orissa's Ganjam district will be completed in December, this year. The SEZ will come up on 3585 acres of land acquired by Tata Steel. The company had acquired the land in mid 90s for setting up a steel plant. But with the project being shelved later, it had decided to use the land for setting up of a SEZ. “Tata Steel has kicked off work on boundary wall construction and land leveling work in the first phase. The company has engaged 400 labourers for the SEZ work”, industries minister Raghunath Mohanty said in a written reply in the state legislative assembly. About four km of boundary wall has been constructed and the work on remaining six km of boundary wall is underway. “The company has taken possession of 2792.65 acres of private land and 792.64 acres of government land for the SEZ. It expects to complete boundary wall construction and land leveling work on the Gopalpur SEZ project by December 2010”, the minister added. The land acquisition work on the Gopalpur SEZ started in 1998-99 and at that time, a compensation of Rs one lakh per acre was fixed for the land oustees, minister for revenue and disaster management S N Patra said in response to another query.

Source: Business Standard