HMT to sell 99 cents of land to Kinfra: Report

HMT Machine Tools, Kalamassery, has begun the process of selling 99 cents of land to Kinfra at the rate of Rs. 5.25 lakh per cent. The GM Bungalow which will also be sold has been priced at Rs. 11.5 lakh, a national daily quoted officials as saying.
The sale follows HMT Ltd selling three acres of land to the National Investigation Agency, with employees of the Kalamassery unit clamouring in vain for a share of the pie to the unit.
CM Bidar, general manager of the Kalamassery unit, told a meeting...
with joint trade unions on Friday that the proceeds from the sale of 99 cents to Kinfra would, however, be received by the Kalamassery unit.
The Hindu quoted Bidar as saying that Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Anant Geete had sent a letter to the Kalamassery unit asking it to facilitate the sale.
“Kinfra had been pressurising us to sell the land for some time and the former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy had written to the Centre demanding the same. The Union Minister’s letter came in response. The necessary approvals have come.
The 99 cents form part of the 350 acres in the possession of the Kalamassery unit and we had engaged a government-approved agency to assess the market value of the land.
The agency said it would be about Rs. 8 to Rs. 10 lakh per cent, but that was not agreeable to Kinfra, which maintained that the rate would then be standard for all land purchases by the government.
Subsequently, they arrived at the present value by taking the rate by which land was sold to HDIL in 2005, with a yearly increase of 10 percent over it,” he said. Kinfra, he added, was in the process of preparing the sale deed.
But the employees of the unit remained agitated. They pointed out that the value of land arrived at was far below the market rate.
“Instead of selling machines, its products, these days the company is more into selling land,” rued an employee on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, the Haryana Cabinet decided to purchase 446 acres land belonging to Pinjore-situated Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT)’s closed tractor unit to develop it as an industrial estate. The 446 acres chunk is a vacant out of total 846.43 acres under HMT’s possession and it will be handed over to Haryana State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (HSIIDC) for the purpose.
The HSIIDC will be responsible for the management of this estate including upgradation and maintenance of all services to the allottees of Industrial plots on this land. The HSIIDC will pay compensation to HMT at the prevailing circle rate for the utilisable land measuring 297 acres which averages to Rs 62.54 lakh per acre and at the rate of 60 per cent of the average rate for the remaining 149 acres of land. The 33.33 acres of land of HMT acquired by the Railways for its Chandigarh-Baddi broad gauge railway line project is part of the above 446 acres of land and the transfer of the same to Railways is agreed to in-principle by both HMT and Haryana government.
However, HMT employees' association is not happy. Vijay Banal, president of HMT Bachao Sangarsh Samiti, said, “The decision of Haryana government to acquire vacant land of HMT to develop industrial estate will never serve the purpose of welfare of more than 150 employees of HMT who are struggling for their livelihood and better future. The state government has failed to address the concerns of HMT employees.”