Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh cleared a land transfer to Baba Ramdev-owned Patanjali foods after it had assured the Baba Ramdev-owned company of 50 acres of land for their manufacturing unit.
At the beginning of the month, Patanjali Yogapeeth General Secretary Acharya Balakrishna threatened to withdraw the Rs 6,000 crore food and herbal park from Uttar Pradesh after the Central government served a notice to the Patanajali Food Products to submit papers related to land acquisition by June 15 or their project to set up Mega Food Park would stand cancelled. The Centre gives a subsidy of Rs 150 crore for setting up Mega Food Park under its Mega Food Park Scheme.
Following this, Yogi Adityanath spoke to Baba Ramdev and assured him that 50 acres of land would be transferred to Patanjali subsidiary Patanjali Food Products for setting up a mega food park.
The erstwhile Akhilesh Yadav government had allotted 455 acres of land to Patanjali Ayurveda Limited in Yamuna Expressway Authority area in Greater Noida in 2016 for setting up a Food and Herbal Park. The company had assured to invest Rs 6,000 and create job employment to over one lakh besides buying agri-produce from farmers in Uttar Pradesh
The company was to set-up manufacturing and processing units for production of organic agri-based products including food, vegetable, milk, milk-based products, herbal medicine and oil, fodder etc. The company was also to set-up a Research and Development Centre for developing newer products.
About 400 tonnes of vegetables and fruits and over 750 tons of organic flour were to be processed and manufactured in its mega plant. Then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had also laid foundation stone on November 30, 2016 for setting up the Mega Food and Herbal Park.