West Bengal Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta, centre, being greeted by Merchants' Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI) President Priti A Sureka, right, during a felicitation and special session on 'Improved prospects of Bengal's Economy', in Kolkata
| Photo Credit:
Swapan Mahapatra
The West Bengal government would be “prepared” to deal with political resistance to its policy of acquiring land for industries and infrastructure projects to attract investments in the State, Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta said on Friday.Speaking at an event organised by industry body MCCI, Dasgupta said the land banks which are there in the State are not going to be enough to be able to satisfy all the different types of demands the government has already got.“We will acquire land. We’ve taken that decision. We will acquire land on behalf of industry, on behalf of infrastructure projects. That is a policy which will meet a certain type of political resistance, and we should be prepared for that. So these are very hard decisions,” Dasgupta pointed out.The finance minister said the government will have to acquire land and redistribute it for productive purposes.Dasgupta’s remarks assumed significance as land acquisition for industrial and infrastructure projects has often faced stiff resistance in West Bengal. Tata Motors had to relocate its plant to produce Nano from Singur to Gujarat’s Sanand in 2008, following a strong anti-land acquistion protest.Unlike the previous Trinamool Congress government, which maintained that private companies should directly negotiate and acquire land as it would not support acquisition for private projects, the present BJP government has said it will acquire land and hand it over to investors.“What we want you to give people is an indication, and the indication is that for the first time in a very very long period, we actually have a government which is unequivocally pro-business. There is no ambiguity of that. We believe that without business, without entrepreneurship, this state cannot survive,” Dasgupta said.The finance minister said the State needs to go aggressively to get certain types of industries whose technology can have a “multiplier effect”. Bengal can play a proactive role as far as inviting certain types of industries, particularly those which are Deep-tech.Referring to the State’s finances, Dasgupta said it continued to face a heavy debt burden, but the government had “gambled by banking on growth” in the Budget .The government favoured a moderate tax regime with greater compliance as being more beneficial for revenue collection, he added.Published on July 24, 2026
