Bhattacharjee

New Delhi, Sept. 26: Bengal today made a formal pitch for the new deep-sea port the Centre has been planning on the eastern coast.

It also sought a new pan-Indian iron-ore policy that will allow free flow of the resource from one state to another.

Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee met the Prime Minister and sought his help to speed up the port proposal that has for a long time been lying with the Planning Commission.

He also pressed for more iron-ore from neighbouring states for the Durgapur and Burnpur steel plants and the steel mills being planned.

Bhattacharjee told Manmohan Singh that the plan to have a deep-sea port in Bengal appeared to have got caught up in red tape. He urged him to take it up with Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

The plan had been announced in the budget speech though the shipping ministry had formulated it earlier.

The ministry wanted a study to be carried out to find a suitable site on the Bengal coast as the draft at the existing ports in Haldia and Calcutta is not deep enough to accommodate the bigger ships that are now increasingly being used world-wide.

Bhattacharjee also sought the Prime Minister’s help to obtain more iron-ore from the neighbouring states.

Iron-ore-rich states want to grant ore leases only to those who promise steel mills on their territories. States that have a developed steel industry without an iron-ore base have been opposing it, arguing that such restrictions distort the market.

Last month, Bhattacharjee, along with the chief ministers of mineral-rich Karnataka and Chhattisgarh, had written to the Prime Minister opposing plans to allow iron-ore export and advocating a national policy on iron-ore use.

The chief ministers argued that lifting quantitative and qualitative restrictions on iron-ore export, as suggested by a high-level committee, could spell disaster for the country’s fast-growing steel industry.