The government has decided to extend the in-principle approval by a year to Reliance Industries Ltd.'s proposed Maha Mumbai special economic zone, with a reduced land size of 5,000 ha. "We will extend the in-principle approval to RIL's Maha Mumbai SEZ by halving the land size from the proposed 10,000 ha," Commerce Secretary G.K. Pillai said after a meeting of the Board of Approvals.

He said the in-principle approval is being granted on the condition that Reliance acquires all the land by consensus. "All the other proposals which have clearances for land size beyond 5,000 ha will also be scaled down," Pillai said. Earlier this year, the government had imposed a limit of 5,000 ha on the size of SEZs following widespread protests in different parts of the country against acquisition of agricultural land for setting up SEZs.

The government had also put the onus of land acquisition on the companies concerned, rather than the state governments. Last month, the Board of Approvals had given conditional clearance for RIL's 1,250 ha multi-product SEZ in Navi Mumbai. The government had said the units in the Navi Mumbai SEZ can only come up when the contiguity is completed, Pillai said.

NEW SEZ APPROVALS
The Board of Approvals today gave an in-principle approval to four new SEZ proposals and final consent to two others. The proposals given in-principle nod today include two information technology SEZs of Infosys Technologies Ltd. in Andhra Pradesh and Ispat Industries Ltd.'s multi-product SEZ in Maharashtra. Genpact India's proposed information technology SEZ in Rajasthan got final approval.

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