Suhail Bhat
SRINAGAR, Dec 8: The State Government has shelved prestigious project of setting up an International Trade Centre (ITC) in Pampore town in South of Srinagar due to lack of funds.
The locals, however, alleged that unwillingness on the part of the Government to complete the projects initiated by their predecessors was the main reason behind abandonment of the project. “Almost 12 years have passed since its foundation stone was laid but there has been no headway in the project so far,” said a local businessman, Mushtaq Ahmad.
In 2005, the then Government embarked on an ambitious project of setting up International Trade Centre in Pampore town of South Kashmir and identified a sprawling 378 Kanals of land. The project was expected to provide impetus to the imbecile business setup of Kashmir by boosting the trading activities and was believed to accumulate all major business firms and corporate offices within one centre.
The idea was to expose local traders and trades – handicraft items and agricultural products like Saffron – to international markets. In 2007, then Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad along with then Union Minister of Trade and Commerce, Jairam Ramesh, laid the foundation stone of ITC at Pampore with a grant of Rs 29 crores to the project. In 2008, SIDCO under Centrally Sponsored Scheme, Assistance for State for Development of Infrastructure (ASSIDE), granted Rs 5 Crore. The funds are unutilized due to negligence from the successive State Governments.
While divulging details of the project, an official of Jammu And Kashmir Projects Construction Company (JKPCC) Limited said the project was a joint initiative between Centre and State and the cost was also supposed to be shared but Centre is now side-tracking and asking State to bear 80 percent of the total project cost. “All the announcements made by Jairam Ramesh (then Union Trade and Commerce Minister) turned out to be hollow and a mere rhetoric,” he said.
Meanwhile, General Manager JKPCC, Vikar Mustafa, when contacted, said that Government has shelved the project due to lack of funds and there were no headways in sight for the project. The locals of Pampore, also called Saffron Town, blamed successive Governments for not showing seriousness towards ITC construction.
“It would have given international exposure to our trade. Right now we have to sell it to the dealers in Delhi or Bangalore who then sell it in international market,” Manzoor Ahmad Banday, a Saffron exporter, said. In case of ITC, Banday said, the farmers would have been able to sell their produce directly to the international customers without any intermediate person, which could fetch them, more money and automatically boost their morale.
Meanwhile, the locals also blamed Government for allegedly granting a share of land meant for ITC to the land mafias. “The officials are hand in glove with land mafia and they have given a patch of land from Trade Centre to these people,” they alleged.
However, a senior Revenue official while rejecting the allegation, said: “Out of 108.13 kanals which comes under district Pulwama we have allotted just 9 marlas to the farmers who had no access to their Saffron land.”
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