With Tata Motors exiting from West Bengal, Singur today is just another small town, groaning under the despair of a failed effort to convert lush green fields into an industrial complex.
Major real estate sector investors here had bought land in and around Singur in the last two years, in anticipation of rapid development of the entire Hooghly district, said property consultants.
Singur was only one part of the double blow suffered by the district. Another mega township project by DLF Ltd, at Dankuni about 25km away from Singur at an estimated investment of Rs 33,000 crore over about 5,000 acre, was also in limbo and this had added to the woes of the developers who planned to invest in Hooghly. For example South City consortium, a major real estate development group backed by companies like Emami, had planned to develop 200 acres to house small scale industries together with the West Bengal Small Industries Development Corporation at Dankuni too.
The project was conceived two years ago, in keeping with the anticipated development of small scale industries in Singur with the Nano plant operational in the area. Till date. about 50 acres had been acquired in the area, said sources.
"The exit of Nano project will definitely impact our project for small scale industries and we have been forced to rethink about the viability of the project. While it is a big setback for industries here, at the same time, one should know that local small scale industries always existed in Singur," said sources in South City.
Experts suggested overall land price for commercial and other uses in Singur could fall as much as 30-40 per cent in the coming days. Land prices had escalated from Rs 5 lakh in 2005-06 to Rs 50-60 lakh an acre in Singur. Santosh Rungta, chairman of the Rungta group, a real estate developer based in Kolkata, who had planned to build an IT and biotech park along with housing project near Singur, said the development which was to take in the next one or years in Singur and adjoining areas, will now be deferred by at least three years.
"The exit of the Tatas from Singur wilh have a negative impact on West Bengal as a whole, as IT companies which are already sluggish due to the financial crisis in the US, will hardly come to West Bengal. We don't think that we planned of our project in Singur, due to the Nano project," said Rungta. Rahul Todi of Shrachi group said the group had planned to invest about Rs 100 crore in close by cities of Srirampur and Chandanagar, in view of industrialisation of Hooghly, triggered by the Nano project.
"So far we have invested Rs 25 crore in the areas, but now we will go slow in executing the project," said Todi.