India paid Rs. 15 crore in six years to China because of Mamata Banerjee's non-compliance.
China offered India free land for its business hub in Guangzhou for a reciprocal gesture of free land for a Chinese Consulate in Kolkata, West Bengal. But Mamata Banerjee's government failed to comply with the request and only ensured that India is paying Rs. 2.5 crore per year for a free land but also cost sufficient embarrassed to the India government.
In 2007, when India opened its consulate in Guangzhou, the port city that is the principal gateway for China’s exports-driven economy, the two nations agreed to a land swap that would also help China open a consulate in Calcutta.
Both nations opened these consulates on rented property, based on the agreement that they could move to permanent premises once the land swap was complete. India and China both identified the plots they would offer the other by late 2008. The then Left Front government in Bengal picked a plot in Rajarhat.
But while China obtained its domestic clearances for the Guangzhou land and offered it to the Indian consulate as early as 2009, India has still not finalised its offer in Calcutta.
A part of the responsibility lies with the earlier Left government in Bengal that failed to obtain the necessary clearances by 2011, when it lost power to Trinamul. The Left in its last years was extremely jittery about land acquisition after Mamata’s agitation prompted Tata Motors to shift its Nano factory outside Bengal in 2008.
But what Chinese officials say has disappointed them the most is the Mamata government’s decision, after it came to power, to offer the consulate an alternative plot even closer to the airport than Rajarhat.
Chinese foreign ministry regulations, a Chinese diplomat said, forbid missions from functioning out of property close to the take-off and landing paths of commercial airlines -– a policy embedded in Chinese fears of nations using low-flying commercial airlines to spy on its missions.
“We have articulated our concerns to both the Indian government in New Delhi and to the West Bengal government, but the state government has not demonstrated willingness to offer us the originally promised land which was fine for us,” the Chinese official said.
Trinamul portrays its land policy as prioritising people over private industrial houses but the glitch over the Chinese consulate has left the Indian taxpayer footing a bill in Guangzhou it shouldn’t need to.
Very sad to notice that after so many years of Central Minister,she is such inefficient adminstrator
ReplyDelete