The Government on Tuesday sought to blunt Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s attack against the Modi Government on the food park issue in lok Sabha by holding the Congress-led UPA dispensation and the promoter company accountable for the cancellation of the project.
In a detailed statement, read out loudly in the lok Sabha amid din and slogan-shouting by the Congress members, Food Processing Minister Harsimrat Kaur said the food park’s promoter company had expressed its inability to pursue the project in the absence of natural gas, which was denied to it by the Government in December 2012.
Kaur said, in view of inordinate delay by the promoter company in meeting the “pre-conditions for final approval, in-principle approval accorded to the project by the Ministry was cancelled.
She said that during a review meeting of the project’s progress in June last year, the promoter company’s representative had informed that without supply of gas at administered price, it would not “consider the project to be viable”.
“In the absence of availability of gas at the administered price the promoter company expressed its inability to pursue the project,” the Minister said.
Kaur said the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had in December 2012 expressed inability to allocate domestic gas for the food park due to acute shortage and lowest priority accorded to captive power plants for such allocation.
The Minister said the promoter company conveyed that they cannot go ahead without domestic natural gas being allotted to them for captive power plant at the administered price.