Kolkata, Aug 11 - The West Bengal government Tuesday announced a ban on using fertile land for township projects in the state.

Land and Land Reforms Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said: 'Not just for industrialisation, but fertile land cannot be acquired for building townships too.'

The state had earlier witnessed a lot of trouble over land acquisition for setting up industrial units in Singur and Nandigram. The protests snowballed into political issues that played a major role in the ruling Left Front's debacle in the elections to rural and civic bodies as also the Lok Sabha polls.

However, Mollah said acquisition could be done for unavoidable projects like rail, road and canal irrigation. But in such cases, the concerned department needed to make available alternate land.

'Multi-crop, irrigated land cannot be touched unless it is extremely necessary,' Mollah said.

If a mono-crop land is taken over for any project, the same area of alternate land has to be provided to the land-holder 'In case of double-crop land, double the area should be replaced.'