The project that was meant to boost tourism in the Konkan region got stuck after farmers refused to part with their land.
Mumbai: Nearly a decade after the Maharashtra government drew up an ambitious plan to build a ‘Sea World’ on the Konkan coast, inspired by the US-based theme park chain, the project is in cold storage, with officials saying that it may be as good as shelved.
A senior official of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) said the corporation even returned to the state government Rs 80-90 crore kept aside for the Sea World project.
The initiative, part of government efforts to boost tourism in the Konkan region, has been a non-starter largely due to opposition from local villagers, who have refused to give up their land for the grand amusement park.
The BJP-led Maharashtra government had initiated the process of land acquisition two years ago. It took the private purchase route to encourage locals to part with their land. Under the private purchase route, the compensation to landowners can go up to as high as 3.75 times the land value.
This has, however, still not impressed villagers, officials say.
“There is absolutely no work being done on the project anymore. A majority of the landowners are now on board, but a handful of them are still strictly opposed to the project,” the senior MTDC official said.
“We cannot work around them because this land is right at the core of the proposed Sea World. Gradually, the government’s efforts have also dwindled and the project is as good as abandoned for now.”
The official added that the MTDC parted with the money after the government wrote to it temporarily seeking the funds of projects that are not active.
“Of the funds budgeted for the Sea World project last year, the MTDC retained about Rs 20 crore in case there are any sudden developments and gave the rest to the state government,” the senior official said.
A multi-crore project
It was the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government in Maharashtra that proposed the Sea World at Sindhudurg district, 471 km south of Mumbai, in 2009. It was the pet project of former Congress leader Narayan Rane, who belongs to the district.
The multi-crore project was to come up in the villages of Tondavali and Vayangani in the Konkan district. The government had planned to implement it on a public-private partnership model and was hoping to conclude land acquisition in a year.
The project never took off due to the stiff local opposition. As per the project’s original scope, the government was to acquire 1,390 acres for the core water-themed amusement park as well as for the development of ancillary tourism facilities such as hotels, resorts and restaurants around it.
After coming to power in 2014, the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government decided to scale the project down to about 350 acres, just enough to build the core amusement park and dropped plans for land acquisition to build a tourism eco-system.
The project was part of the state government’s grand plan to aggressively promote tourism in the coastal Sindhudurg district, by upgrading its forts, improving transport infrastructure, building helipads, and setting up resorts at the Sawantwadi Palace.