A team of Haldia Development Authority (HDA) officials, accompanied by police, on Saturday afternoon seized 98.5 acres of land that had been leased out to a private company on the ground that the plot was not being used for industrial purposes.

Ural India Ltd had got the land in 2005 on a 90-year lease to manufacture heavy-duty military vehicles. Ural India, a joint venture between a Bengal-based private firm and a Russian company, allegedly never produced any vehicle at the site and only constructed a factory shed on 5 acres where it assembled automobile parts, that too a token amount. The government on Saturday locked the shed too.

Ural alleged that the land was taken back forcibly. “It is not true that we are non-operational. Yes, our production might have dropped recently, but we still have all the materials. The government did this by force and has adversely affected the image of Haldia,” said Dilip Kulavi, the plant’s working general manager.

On Saturday, the HDA’s CEO, accompanied by the agency’s land officer and the block development officer of Haldia, locked the plant after pasting an order issued by the Haldia sub-divisional magistrate’s court on its gates.

“We have issued notices to over 20 concerns in Haldia since 2011 (to either resume production or return the land to the government). Some of them either stepped up their industrial activities or complied with the notice, but Ural’s production had been dropping,” said Vibhu Goel, the CEO of the HDA.

Farmers have been cultivating swathes of the unutilised land.