Dasmunshi asks CM to hold meet on Singur

West Bengal Congress leader and union minister P R Dasmunshi today alleged there was lack of transparency in the compensation given to farmers for the land acquired for Tata Motors car plant at Singur, and asked Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to hold an all-party meeting.

"There is a lack of transparency in providing the compensation package to the affected farmers. The state chief minister should call a meeting of all political parties an explain the exact status," he told reporters here.

Making it clear that he was speaking in the capacity of a state Congress leader, Dasmunshi alleged people who have sold land were in the list for getting compensation, while many share croppers who were actually cultivating were ignored.

Stating that the party was not opposed to the state's industrialisation, and particularly to the Tata project, he said people were definitely opposed to desperate ways of taking land by force when other options were available. All charges against agitators should be dropped, he added.

Dasmunhsi said the project, where Tata Motors plans to manufacture its Rs 1-lakh car, be shifted from Singur to an alternate venue, which could be either Sankrail or Kharagpur.

"I shall appeal to both the chief minister and Tata Group to examine an alternate site for the project," he said.

He said even if the production programme was delayed by another one year, "heaven will not fall, but confrontation, agitation, bad blood in the name of this project should be over and good sense must prevail."

Meanwhile, Tatas today said they had sent feelers to Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Bannerjee for talks to explain their work but to no avail. "We have sent feelers to her three-four times in the past three months. But we have not had any positive response to that," Tata Motors Managing Director Ravi Kant told PTI here when asked if they had talked to the protesting leader.

He said Tata Motors was not averse to holding talks with the firebrand leader and asked those protesting to understand the "ground realities" first before opposing the project with an investment of Rs 1,000 crore.

"We are open to talks with her. We would like to explain to her (Mamata) the kind of activities that we have planned for Singur...We are open to suggestions," he added.

On whether Tatas have thought of looking at alternate sites, he replied in the negative, saying the state government had been very supportive and the project would prove to be a milestone for "re-industrialisation" of West Bengal.