Amid reports of the company's plan to shift its Gurgaon plant, Dharambir Singh has suggested offering 200 acres of land which is currently lying vacant in Charkhi Dadri town. (Representational)

With Indian’s largest car maker, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, planning to shift its Gurgaon plant, BJP’s Bhiwani-Mahendragarh MP Dharambir Singh is trying hard to get it shifted to Charkhi Dadri town of south Haryana. Charkhi Dadri is part of the Bhiwani-Mahendragarh Lok Sabha constituency.

Maruti Suzuki wants to shift its plant from Gurgaon because of the problems it faces during movement of trucks carrying raw material and finished products. “Apart from this, there is no scope of further expansion at the current location,” Maruti Suzuki India chairman R C Bhargava told The Indian Express on Friday.

Amid reports of the company’s plan to shift its Gurgaon plant, Dharambir Singh has suggested offering 200 acres of land which is currently lying vacant in Charkhi Dadri town. Around 90 km from Delhi, Charkhi Dadri is part of the National Capital Region (NCR).

In support of his plea, Dharambir Singh on Thursday wrote letters to Bhargava, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar and Deputy Chief Dushyant Chautala, who also holds Industries portfolios in the BJP-JJP Haryana government. The MP has also written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Minister of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises Prakash Javadekar pleading to get the plant shifted to Charkhi Dadri.

“Maruti company is going to shift to another place in Haryana from Gurgaon because of more population and long jams due to heavy traffic there. There was a CCI Cement factory at Charkhi Dadri district headquarter which now stands closed. Its 200 acres of land is lying vacant which belongs to Union Ministry of Heavy industries and it can be availed for Maruti easily. As per requirements, more land in the adjoining areas can be availed at cheaper rates,” mentions Dharambir Singh in his letters.

The BJP MP further says that there is better connectivity of road and railways near this land. Mentioning connectivity of two national highways (NH-334 and NH 148 B), Dharambir Singh points out that these highways connect Charkhi Dadri with towns of Uttar Pradesh and Punjab while proposed Expressway-152 will connect Charkhi Dadri with Delhi-Mumbai-Expressway via Rajasthan. Apart from a railway line near the town, the MP says, Integrated Multimodal Logistics Hub is to be developed at Nangal Chaudhary of district Mahendragarh at the distance of just 60 km from Charkhi Dadri. Sources close to Dharambir Singh say that the MP has plans to meet senior officers of the Union Ministry of Heavy Industry in an attempt to convince them about his proposal.

Bhargava, meanwhile, said that he has not received the letter of the BJP MP yet, pointing out that the current plant is situated in 300 acres and that’s the minimum area required. Bhargava confirmed that they were considering land parcels as offered by the Haryana government. The government, said sources, has offered land parcels at three places which include Manesar and Sohna of Gurgaon district, and Kharkhoda in Sonipat district to the automobile giant.

The company already has another plant at Manesar. Bhargava said that the combined capacity of both plants is around 17 lakh cars annually. Maruti had begun its journey in India around four decades back when it had rolled out its first model of Maruti-800 which attracted the middle class and lower middle-class families for long.

According to Bhargava, while the company wants to shift its Gurgaon plant, it hasn’t set a deadline for the same.