The Centre and Telangana government will jointly develop a Smart Integrated Industrial City on about 3,245 acres in Zaheerabad as a priority project under the Hyderabad Nagpur Industrial Corridor (HNIC).
Special purpose vehicle NICDIT Zaheerabad Industrial Smart City has been set up with 49% stake held by Government of India’s National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust and the State government’s Telangana Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (TGIIC) remaining 51% equity.
The Zaheerabad Industrial Area (ZIA), as the project will be known, is to develop state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities backed by professional management to attract and support investments in industrial and allied sectors. It is expected to provide impetus to manufacturing activity in the State, promote integrated development of industrial, urban, social and transport infrastructure and support Make in India and the Act East Policy, show documents accompanying a public notice for ZIA.
For Zaheerabad, which is home to some of the leading manufacturers, including a plant of automobile major Mahindra, it will be the second project of national prominence for which it is being considered. In recent years, by virtue of its location near the national highway, it figured in the list of proposed host of one of the National Investment and Manufacturing Zones in the country. Though NIMZ continues to be mentioned, in passing, a picture on the status of the project remains unclear.
For TGICC, the State government’s nodal agency for industrial infrastructure development, this will be another major project and comes on the back of the development and auction of 400 acres it had proposed in Kancha Gachibowli Village near Hyderabad IT Hub. It had previously also proposed the Hyderabad Pharma City project.
Proposed in Nyalkal and Jharasangam mandals of Sangareddy district, the ZIA site is connected by road, rail and about 125 km from Hyderabad airport making it an ideal for an industrial node. Of the 3,245.48 acres, approximately 2,961 acres or about 91% is under the possession of the State. The remaining 284.48 acres consist of mostly patta, assigned and government land, for which land acquisition is in process, the document showed.
Krishnapatnam port in Andhra Pradesh, about 320 km away, will the closest major seaport. The proposed multi-modal logistics park (MMLP) at Manoharabad is the nearest major logistics infrastructure located 110 km away. From roads, electrical works, common utilities and information and communication technology facilities, the infrastructure development under ZIA project will consist of various components.
At the broader level, the HNIC seeks to integrate several manufacturing centres along the Hyderabad – Nagpur region.