The Industries department has amended norms regarding private industrial estates, now allowing individuals or families owning a minimum of five acres or holding lease rights for the same to apply for permits.
Earlier, only registered partnerships, consortiums, cooperatives or societies could apply. The earlier requirement that applicants should own the land has now been changed, allowing those who hold lease rights for a period of 30 years or more to apply.
A total of eight private industrial estates have been sanctioned till now across the State, while 30 other applications are in various stages of processing. Three of the sanctioned parks are in Kottayam, two in Pathanamthitta, and one each in Kannur, Malappuram, and Palakkad.
According to officials, a good number of the applications are for industries related to food processing, while some deal with light engineering works.
The delay in clearing some of the applications has been attributed to the need to ensure that the proposed parks are located in land which does not fall in ecologically sensitive areas or Coastal Regulation Zones (CRZ). The land also should not fall within the purview of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2008.
A State-level selection committee, comprising secretaries of the Industries, Finance, Revenue, Local Self-Government, Water Resources, Power, and Environment departments, is supposed to dispose of the application within 30 days of receipt of the application.
Red category industries notified by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board will not be permitted in private estates. The State government will facilitate development of roads, power and water supply for the private industrial estates and provide an assistance of ₹30 lakh per acre, subject to a maximum of ₹3 crore.
The entire area can be allotted fully to a single person or the developer can operate an estate by running a self or group-owned single industrial unit. Ancillary units are also expected to come up along with the major industrial units within each park. The developer permit will be cancelled if no substantial development is done within two years of permit issue.
The Left Democratic Front (LDF) government aims to facilitate the opening of at least 100 industrial estates across the State before the end of its tenure.
