After protests, pressure from Shiv Sena, Maharashtra govt cancels land notification for Nanar refinery project

Mumbai: The Maharashtra government Saturday made it clear officially that a Rs 3 lakh crore oil refinery project will not come up at Nanar in the coastal Ratnagiri district. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis later said his government was keen that the refinery come up in the state, and an alternative site will be made available. Earlier, Shiv Sena leader and industry minister Subhash Desai said the chief minister had signed a proposal to denotify the land which was to be acquired. As the Sena was opposed to Nanar refinery citing local opposition, Fadnavis, while announcing a tie-up between the BJP and Sena for coming polls, had announced that the project would be shifted. [caption id=“attachment_4252651” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis. PTI[/caption] “The Sena had promised the people of Konkan region that the project will not come up there as long as they were opposed to it. Today we have fulfilled our promise. Even the alliance with the BJP was sealed on the condition that the project at Nanar would be scrapped,” Desai told reporters. The government had issued a notification in May 2017 to acquire 5,932 hectares of land across 14 villages in Ratnagiri district and two villages in Sindhudurg district. Due to opposition from the local people, the government had stayed the land acquisition process. “In April 2018, I sent a proposal to the chief minister seeking de-notification of the land that was to be acquired,” said Desai. The file was pending with Fadnavis for long but the chief minister signed it Saturday, he said. “A gazette notification will be issued by the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation to cancel the notification of land acquisition in two days,” Desai said. State-run oil majors have tied up with Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company for the mega refinery project. Fadnavis told PTI late in the evening that his government wants the refinery to come up in Maharashtra, because it will power the state’s growth for the next ten years. “We will find an alternative site taking everybody in confidence and will not let this investment opportunity, which will create one lakh jobs, go anywhere else,” he said.