The city centre, which would have comprised a sports complex, a shopping mall, an entertainment centre and residential quarters, would have been built by Kharagpur-Midnapore Planning Board on a public-private partnership basis. Land had been identified in Ruisanda, Jharia and Diamond Chowk. The Kharagpur-Midnapore Development Board had borrowed Rs 16 crore from the state Government to acquire the land.

At the meeting, Minister for Land and Land Reforms Abdur Rezzak Mollah and Minister for Public Works Department Kshiti Goswami said the acquisition should be deferred as the proposal did not have details like the nature of the land or scope of employment in the project.

After the meeting was over, Minister for Commerce and Industries Nirupam Sen, when asked about the reasons for the debacle, said, “People did not vote for us.” Asked whether industrialisation faced a roadblock, he replied, “Now they (the Opposition) will say that.”

The CM has decided to transfer the Land Use Board, which was assigned the task of identifying land for industrial use, from the Commerce and Industries Department under Nirupam Sen, a strong votary for industrialisation, to Abdur Rezzak Mollah. Mollah, within the CPI(M) is opposed to the farmland-for-industry policy and in 2006 had even resigned from the Cabinet over the issue of land acquisition for industrialisation.