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Scrapped NSG hubs

Abingdonboy

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Centre invites Bihar, J’khand for NSG hub meet, ruffles feathers in Bengal
Posted by admin on September 20, 2010 in Political | 0 Comment
Kolkata: Speculation is rife that the state is likely to lose an important project, which the Centre had planned for Bengal to tackle terror attacks like the one in Mumbai.

The Central government has called secretaries of two other states to discuss setting up of the NSG unit which was earlier planned to be set up on 600 acres of land in Kolkata.

Union Home Secretary G K Pillai has requested the chief secretaries of West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand to attend a meeting on the issue on September 21 in Delhi.

When asked if the project was still on in Kolkata, the Union Home Secretary did not give any answer.

Since state Chief Secretary Ardhendu Sen and Home Secretary Samar Ghosh will be busy with the visit of President Pratibha Patil to the city on September 22, neither of them will go to attend the meeting.

Instead, Bhaskar Kulbe, resident commissioner of West Bengal in Delhi, will attend the meeting. “We have sent all the relevant papers to him and briefed him on the matter,” said an official from the state Home department.

According to an official from the state Home department calling secretaries of two other states indicates the Centre is weighing the option of shifting the unit out of the state as West Bengal could not provide land at an acceptable price during the last one-and-a-half years.

Following Union Home Minister P Chidambaram’s announcement after the Mumbai attack that three more NSG hubs would be set up in Kolkata, Mumbai and Hyderabad, NSG teams have been visiting the state in search of land since the beginning of 2009. They were taken to places like Panagarh in Burdwan district, Dankuni in Hooghly district and Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas district. Two former NSG DGs, JK Dutt and NPS Aulakh, also inspected the land.

The last offer that the state government gave the Centre was on August 22 when it sent a proposal to the NSG offering them four plots measuring 600 acres at a price of Rs 48 crore at Barrackpore in North 24 Parganas.

The NSG did not respond to the offer and now the Centre has come up with the idea of holding meeting of secretaries of three states.

“The NSG said they were ready to pay a maximum of Rs 16 lakh per acre and our price was Rs 8 lakh per acre. In that case, they should have accepted our offer. But if they reject it, then perhaps they are not interested in setting up the project here,” said an official of the state government.

“We will present our case in the meeting. I don’t know what will happen after that,” said Samar Ghosh, state Home Secretary.


Centre invites Bihar, J?khand for NSG hub meet, ruffles feathers in Bengal | Haata

It seems the memories of politicians is very short. after 26/11 ministers and CMs were falling over themselves to congratulate NSG and saying how much they have ot do to improve security, now when the issue of MONEY comes into it....
 
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^^^
@ Abingdonboy
The title of the thread is misleading. It pertains only to 'one' hub in Calcutta. There is no talk of scrapping it, only of location/re-location. As for the other hubs, many of them are up and running.
 
@ Abingdonboy
The title of the thread is misleading. It pertains only to 'one' hub in Calcutta. There is no talk of scrapping it, only of location/re-location. As for the other hubs, many of them are up and running.

Point taken
 
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