By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Dec 3:
The Uttar Pradesh Government is planning to set up a “world class” film city on sprawling 1000 hectare land at NOIDA in the Gautam Budh Nagar district, near Jevar airport, to enable the Hindi belt to have its own film city.
780 acres land located at Sector-21 of the Yamuna Expressway Industrial area has been earmarked for the film city and 220 acres for commercial plots, bringing the total to 1000 acres of land for the proposed project.
The filmmaker Manoj Munshir from UP had raised a demand for a film city in the Hindi belt. Saying that there is the Tamil film industry in Chennai, the Malayali film industry in Kerala, Bangla film industry in Kolkata, whereas there was no such infrastructure in UP. As such it made sense to have the Hindi film industry in the Hindi belt and not in a non-Hindi speaking state like Maharashtra. After that, artist Malini Awasthi had also taken up the issue and had appealed to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to step up on the move. Following these appeals, the Yogi Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government recently announced the setting up of the film city in UP.
A few days back, filmmaker Madhur Bhandarkar had met UP CM Yogi Adityanath and shared ideas about the development of the country’s ‘largest and most beautiful film city’. Bhandarkar assured full cooperation from the film fraternity to the UP Government. Recently actor Akshaykumar also met Yogi in Mumbai and discussed his upcoming film ‘Ram Setu’, which he had announced on Diwali.
Yogi, who was in Mumbai met investors and film folks in Mumbai. However a war of attrition has began between opposition BJP and Maharashtra leaders over UP’s plans to set up the film city.
Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut said that “Not easy to shift Mumbai’s film city to another place. The film industry in south India is also big, there’re film cities in West Bengal and Punjab too. Will Yogi Ji also visit these places and talk to directors/artists there or is he going to do so only in Mumbai?. NCP MP Supriya Sule said “ Mumbai and bollywood are inseparable and no one can snatch it away. BJP leader Chandrakant Patil said that the proposed film city in UP may provide better facilities and film makers may be benefitted by them.
However, while addressing the media Adityanath said that “We’ve not come here to take anything away. We’re building a new Film City. Why one is getting worried about it? We’re giving something new to people in form of world-class infrastructure. Today is an important day in the development of UP. The schemes launched by us in the state have increased the prospect of investment. We are constantly in touch with those investors. Defence Corridor is also being set up in UP. We have world-class institutions to help us with science and technology. The largest MSME units in the country are available in UP, which will play its role in making India a $5 trillion economy”.
