Patanjali to shift food park from Noida after slow response from UP government

After apparent dilly-dallying by the Yogi Adityanath government, the Managing Director of Patanjali has decided to put his foot down. While the land for the facility in Noida was sanctioned by former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, Akhilesh Yadav, Patanjali was yet to receive a green signal for the food park.

Baba Ramdev-owned Patanjali has decided to move its planned mega food park from Noida in the state of Uttar Pradesh. The decision was recently announced by Acharya Balkrishna, Managing Director of Patanjali Ayurved Limited and co-founder of Patanjali Yogpeeth.

Speaking to ANI, Balkrishna said that the decision was taken due to the state government's "disappointing attitude" as a result of which the "lives of farmers could not be improved."

Mega Food Park was coming up to make lives of farmers, better. We had also asked for permission from Central Government. There are paper works for which we requested state government. But due to their disappointing attitude, it couldn't be done.

Patanjali had met the state government officials and even chief minister Yogi Adityanath several times to ensure all necessary permissions were granted, but have so far failed to get a green flag. Balkrishna accused the government of dragging its feet over the paperwork resulting in incomplete formalities.

Under former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Patanjali was granted 455 acres of land in Greater Noida for the Patanjali Food and Herbal Park. Akhilesh Yadav laid the foundation stone for the park in 2016.

The food park in Noida was to be one of the largest of its kind planned by Patanjali. It would have cost the company Rs 2,000 crore while the total output would approximately have been a whopping Rs 25,000 crore annually at full capacity. The park was also expected to bring 10,000 jobs to the area.

As per the Patanjali website, the food park has been envisaged to help in the creation of enabling infrastructure for food processing and a comprehensive 'farm-to-plate' supply chain system. These parks would provide state of the art infrastructure for food processing in the country on a pre-identified cluster basis.

The food parks are part of the company's vision to reimagine the FMCG industry in India. Patanjali currently manufactures a wide variety of products from soap to shampoo, biscuits to juice and recently launched an instant messenger application.

[With inputs from ANI]