Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Wednesday urged the Central Government to announce a policy decision regarding buying of unutilised land of Central Public Sector Units (PSUs) by the State Governments which are either running in losses or have been closed in their States.
Speaking at a meeting of Pre-Budget Consultative Committee of Finance Ministers of States convened by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Delhi, Khattar quoted the example of the land of Central Public Units in Haryana which are lying idle and said 205 acres of land of Cement Corporation of India in Dadri and 90 acres of land of Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd in Gurugram are lying unutilised.
Similarly, 70 acres of land of Hindustan Insecticide Ltd., in Gurugram is also lying unutilised.
The Haryana Government is ready to buy these lands and he has written letters to the Central Government several times and has also held meetings in this regard.
Khattar said there has been only one success on this issue of Haryana, which is to purchase the land of HMT Pinjore. Out of 446 acres of land in this public sector unit, the Haryana Government purchased 297 acres of land at collector rate and 149 acres of land, with no construction over it, at 60 percent of collector rate in 2018.
The Chief Minister urged that in the budget address, a policy decision should be announced on the issue that if a central public sector unit has been lying closed by Central Government and a State Government wants to buy this land, then it would be mandatory for all the public sector undertakings to sell it on collector rate plus 20 per cent.
He said that with this decision, the central public undertakings would get a large amount and the burden on the Union Budget would be reduced. He said Haryana has become a kerosene-free State, an open defecation free State, and a State with educated Panchayats.
“Similarly, we have improved from the 14th position in ‘Ease of Doing Business rankings’ to number five and then to number three in the country. We now rank first in the northern States,” he said.
Khattar said in the last five years, more than 70,000 youths were given Government jobs on merit in a transparent manner besides giving 100 hours of paid work to the same number of graduate and post graduate unemployed youth.
Apart from this, lakhs and crores of rupees have been invested in the private sector which generated lakhs of new employment opportunities for the youth of the State.
He said the growth rate of Haryana in the year 2018-19 has been 8.19 per cent, which is more than the national growth rate of 6.81 per cent. In the last five years, the per capita income of the State has increased to Rs 2,26,644 while the per capita income of the country has been Rs 1,26, 406 in 2018-19.
The Chief Minister gave three suggestions as how Haryana’s efforts could fetch much better results in the forthcoming Union Budget. The Haryana Government and the Ministry of Railways together formed a SVP in the ratio of 50:50 in the year 2017.
This SVP named ‘Haryana Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation’ has made proposals for three new railway lines and submitted to the Ministry of Railways.
The approval of these three projects is on the advanced stage. He requested that these should come up in the budget address.
Describing Hisar as one of the most suitable places in Haryana as compared to other states to reduce air pressure at IGI Delhi Airport, the Chief Minister said that under the Regional Connectivity Scheme — UDAN aimed at making the affordable travel facility to the people, Hisar and Chandigarh has recently been connected with the air highway.
He urged the Union Finance Minister that the Central Government should take initiative to implement this scheme in Haryana more effectively.
The Chief Minister said that apart from Hisar, the State Government has a proposal to set up another airport in Karnal. He said the Central Government’s assistance would be taken to supplement efforts to develop a dry port for providing cargo facilities at Hisar Airport.
The Chief Minister has also demanded that additional assistance should be made available to the State through NABARD to compensate the accumulated losses of Rs 3,500 crore of Primary Agricultural Cooperative Societies (PACS) for the interest waiver scheme started by the State Government to provide debt relief to the farmers.
He said that for the development of agriculture, it is necessary that saline land should be improved, pointing out that about 4.25 lakh hectares of agricultural land in Haryana is affected by salinity. Therefore, the Central Government is requested that in the first phase of this program, financial assistance should be increased for the improvement of 1.5 lakh hectares saline lands.