Uttar Pradesh will acquire nearly 35,000 acres in the arid Bundelkhand region for a mega industrial township.
The Yogi Adityanath government 2.0 has envisioned Bundelkhand as a counter-magnet to Noida, which conceived in the 1970s as an industrial, commercial and residential enclave in the Western UP district of Gautam Buddha Nagar.
Even as the Western UP districts benefitted economically from proximity to the National Capital Region (NCR), the central and eastern UP districts, including Bundelkhand continued to lag owing to sub-optimal private investment and lack of proper infrastructure.
Now, the government is looking to change this matrix by ramping up the basic infrastructure of expressways, roads and power supply in Bundelkhand.
For this purpose, the state last year constituted Bundelkhand Industrial Development Authority (BIDA) with its epicentre at Jhansi. BIDA is expected to catalyse the UP’s ambitious $trillion economy target and bolster an equitable socioeconomic growth.
Bundelkhand, the sparsely populated region, which was long associated with parched landmass and a large-scale migration of youth for jobs, is gearing up to reap the benefits in years to come.
BIDA was created on the lines of New Okhla Industrial Development Authority (NOIDA). At the same time, the Yogi government is wooing the private sector for investment in the region.
BIDA encompasses acquisition of 35,000 acres worth nearly Rs 6,000 crore in the first phase spanning 33 revenue villages in Jhansi.
While UP has earmarked Rs 8,000 crore for land acquisition by various industrial development authorities, BIDA alone would get nearly Rs 5,000 crore for the purpose.
Two other mega projects namely Bundelkhand Expressway and UP Defence Corridor will also galvanise BIDA as a leading industrial hub in North India.
The composite Bundelkhand region spans almost 69,000 sq km across seven districts in UP (Chitrakoot, Banda, Jhansi, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Mahoba and Lalitpur) and six districts in MP (Chhatarpur, Tikamgarh, Damoh, Sagar, Datia and Panna).
Last week, the first board meeting of BIDA was held in Jhansi under the chairmanship of UP additional chief secretary Manoj Kumar Singh, who is also the UP agricultural production commissioner (APC), infrastructure and industrial development commissioner (IIDC).
Recently, UP finance minister Suresh Khanna, while interacting with top industrialists and investors in Lucknow, had underscored that BIDA would script a NOIDA like success story.