The Centre is considering a Constitutional amendment and a separate legislation to give the proposed National Industrial Corridor Authority (NICA) comprehensive powers as well as supremacy over state authorities for it to smoothly operate.
The move is in view of the difficulties and delays in Centre-state coordination on different aspects of $90-billion Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) rollout.
NICA, to be headquartered in Pune, may also subsume the DMIC Project Implementation Trust and the DMIC Development Corporation (that are implementing the DMIC project) so that the knowledge and expertise gained from the DMIC rollout can be replicated in the development of other proposed corridors, official sources told FE.
The corridors being planned include Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor, Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor, Bengaluru Mumbai Economic Corridor and Vizag-Chennai corridor.
Inter-ministerial discussions have started on the structure, function, legal authority (including a separate legislation and the need of a Constitutional amendment), who all will be its members and the need for a blue-print.
Currently, the Union List of the Constitution of India has national infrastructure including railways, highways declared by or under law made by Parliament to be national highways, shipping, navigation on similarly declared national waterways, major ports, airways, air navigation and aerodromes as well as posts and telegraphs, telephones,
broadcasting and other like forms of communication. The State List has in it state highways, communication not specified in the Union List, municipal trams ways, ropeways and inland waterways.
Thanks to the clarity on national highways, setting up of the National Highways Authority of India and enacting the NHAI Act was easy. However, currently, ?industries? are part of the State List. This is barring ?industries? under the Union List, including those declared by Parliament by law for defence or for war as well as ?industries?
declared by Parliament by law to be expedient in the public interest (eg: arms and explosives).
The Constitutional amendment is being considered to clear the ambiguity regarding national industrial corridors and NICA as well as to ensure the needed powers to fast-track the setting up of industrial corridors, the sources said.
?You cannot have a Central law on a subject (industries) that is mainly in the States List. It is not clear if industrial corridors falls within the Union List as currently some states also have industrial corridors within their territory. Therefore, a Constitutional amendment is being considered to clarify that Centre-state coordination on national industrial corridors will be a Central List item,? an official said. ?This will be helpful as the NICA can then give direction to the states and expedite the setting up of such corridors,? the official added.
However, they added, if there is no inter-ministerial consensus on such a move and also if there is objection from the states, such an ambition may be scaled down and NICA can even be registered as a Society under the Societies Act like the Sports Authority of India (controlled by the Centre under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports). Then, it will be back to how the DMIC Development Corporation is functioning, which through an Apex Authority led by the Union finance minister and including the concerned Central ministers and the chief ministers of the respective states through which the corridor is passing.
The Budget 2014-15 proposed a NICA to coordinate the development of the industrial corridors and allocated an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore for this purpose. It is envisaged that these corridors will have smart cities linked to transport connectivity, which will be the cornerstone of the strategy to drive the country?s growth in manufacturing and urbanization, finance minister Arun Jaitley had said in his Budget speech.
