Rs 3,000-cr stuck as CLU applications pending

Chandigarh, November 28

Advertisement

The investment of Rs 3,000 crore is stuck as Change of Land Use (CLU) applications have been pending for want of approval at the Town and Country Planning Department and before the CM for more than the mandatory period of 45 days.

As per Haryana Enterprises Promotion Centre (HEPC), as on November 28, about 83 applications have been pending for more than 45 days. As many as 76 of those are pending for more than 60 days. Some of those have been pending for more than a year also.

The HEPC was set up in 2017 for providing approvals, clearances and NOCs to all industrial services with facilities to track the stage of the application and for providing support on incentives and policies. For CLUs, the investors apply through HEPC.

As per a decision of the Empowered Executive Committee (EEC) under Principal Secretary to the CM in February, all the cases were to be decided within 45 days except for the power department.

As per sources, the proposed investment in pending CLU applications is Rs 2,966.13 crore which would have provided employment to 5,876 people. But it is stuck.

The CLU applications are either pending with Deputy Commissioners at the district level or Director, Town and Country Planning (DTCP), or at the CM’s level.

Those at the DC level are for land less than 1 acre and investment up to Rs 10 crore and also where industrial project is in the industrial zone.

The DTCP decides about cases where the development plan is published and the land involved is more than 1 acre or if the project is in the agriculture zone.

In the absence of development plan, it is the CM who is the competent authority.

HEPC has the power to initiate cases for deemed approval but only in those cases where the projects are to be started in the industrial zone.

“But most of the pending applications at HEPC are for setting up projects in the agriculture zone,” said District Town Planner (DTP), HEPC, Hitesh Sharma. He is a nodal officer for the Town and Country Planning Department in HEPC.

As per the documents accessed by The Tribune, the internal discussions at HEPC call for change in rules so that HEPC could move cases for deemed approval in the agriculture zone too.

New projects are preferred in the agriculture zone as an investor doesn’t have to pay for development charges and the land is cheaper.