Mumbai: Despite chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh`s explicit orders to halt land acquisition notification for the controversy ridden Reliance SEZ, revenue minister Narayan Rane says there is no bar on land acquisition for the project.

Rane, a former Shiv Sana chief minister of Maharashtra, told reporters that there was no reason to halt the land acquisition exercise and it would continue as per rules.

The controversial issue of land acquisition for the Maha-Mumbai SEZ project is now becoming a political battle between Deshmukh and his bete noire Rane, who joined the Congress in 2005.

In March, under pressure from the Congress party high command, Deshmukh had announced a freeze on land acquisitions after a Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee team headed by Sanjay Nirupam and Ramseth Thakur warned of a social eruption in Raigad district, where the proposed multi-product SEZ is due to come up come up.

Last week, the SEZ, promoted by Reliance Industries (RIL) chairman Mukesh Ambani and RIL SEZ division head Anand Jain, failed to get clearance from the board of approvals as the union revenue department wanted more details on measures proposed by the promoters to prevent revenue leakages.

Also, the empowered group of ministers had put a cap on the size of SEZs to 5,000 hectares, whereas Reliance had wanted 10,000 hectares.