Wanting road-touching plots, new land acquired for Amt PM Mitra park

NAGPUR: The PM Mitra (Pradhan Mantri Mega Integrated Textile Region and Apparel) park in Amravati, spread in 1,000 acres, was announced on Sunday by the Union textile minister Piyush Goyal. A similar facility for the sector started eight years ago right beside the new one proposed is still half empty.
In 2015, a textile park of the state government was started at the same Nandgaonpeth estate of the Maharashtra Industries Development corporation (MIDC) where the PM Mitra park would also come up.The old textile park is spread in an area of 2,500 acres. At present, as much as 1,200 acres remain vacant, say sources.
Additional land had to be acquired for PM Mitra park because the existing park is not entirely road facing. One of the norms is that PM Mitra park should be facing the highways. However, only 550 acres of state government textile park was highway facing while the rest was behind. To get a contiguous patch, fresh land was taken over by the government. This means 550 acres from the old park were added to PM Mitra and 450 acres additionally acquired, a source said.
The MIDC has acquired 450-odd acres of land for the PM Mitra park paying Rs16 lakh an acre to over 390 farmers. The entire process was completed in last six months. The land on which the existing park is set up was acquired in mid-1990s, say sources.
The old textile park was among the much-pushed projects of then chief minister Devendra Fadnavis as a means to ultimately benefit the cotton growers of Vidarbha. Raymond is among the biggest investors in the existing park and has a linen plant, which does not use cotton as raw material. The Raymond’s plant was inaugurated by Fadnavis. The new textile park is dubbed to attract investments to the tune of ₹10,000 crore.
Government sources say both the textile parks are distinct from each other. The first one has only basic facilities. The PM Mitra is a Centre project and would be having amenities exclusively for a textile zone. Early birds to the new textile park can benefit from a special incentive package worth ₹300 crore.
“The PM Mitra park is merely old wine in new bottle. It’s doubtful that substantial investment may be attracted. The government had come up with a production linked incentive (PLI) scheme for the textile sector. Investment to the tune of ₹1.85 lakh crore was expected. As against this, investments worth ₹1,500 crore have been made since 2021 when the scheme was launched. The scheme has been opened again,” says LN Kaushik, president of Textile Consumer Foundation, an NGO.