INDIA is set to miss a December deadline to acquire land for a Japan-backed US$17 billion bullet train project following protests by fruit growers, government officials said, likely delaying one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s most ambitious projects.

Modi’s office is now monitoring the project week to week, as Indian officials seek to reassure Japan that the hurdles can be overcome through intense negotiations with sapota and mango growers in the western state of Maharashtra.

Protests, backed by local politicians, have flared up in recent months against attempts to secure sections of a 108-km stretch, which is around one-fifth of the entire bullet train corridor connecting Mumbai with Ahmedabad, the largest commercial city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.

“I’ve worked hard for three decades to develop this plantation, and they are asking me to hand over this land,” sapota farmer Dashrat Purav, 62, said as he showed his orchard in the town of Palghar, a three-hour-drive north of Mumbai.

“I haven’t worked hard to surrender land for the project. I did that for my children.”

Purav said he would sell his land only if at least one of his two unemployed sons was promised a government job.

Protests against land acquisitions are common in India, where tens of millions of farmers till small holdings. A planned US$44 billion refinery to be run by a consortium including Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest oil producer, is also struggling to secure land in Maharashtra.

“Land acquisition for any project is complex in India,” said Dhananjay Kumar, spokesman for the National High Speed Rail Corp. (NHSRCL) that is overseeing the project. “Here also we are facing difficulty because of so much resistance.”

Failure to procure the bullet train land by the deadline would delay disbursal of soft loans by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), a government development body, which is reviewing the project next month, said two senior officials with the state-run Indian Railways, declining to be named.

A JICA spokeswoman said that India must create relocation plans for local residents and make them public in order to enter into a loan agreement covering the main part of the bullet train project.

“It is possible that it takes time to sign a contract as India takes proper and careful measures in line with JICA’s guidelines for environmental and social considerations,” she said.

NHSRCL’s Kumar, said in a statement late Tuesday that the sanction of the loan by JICA was not linked to the land acquisition.

To assuage Japan’s concerns, Indian officials have sought a meeting this month with transport ministry officials in Tokyo, one of the Indian officials said. India wants the project’s completion target to be advanced by a year to 2022, the 75th year of India’s independence.

(SD-Agencies)