Tata car team's visit irks Bengal villagers

The local residents of Singur in Hooghly district of West Bengal staged a protest in front of a technical team of Tata Motors when it visited the area to evaluate the suitability of the site for its proposed Rs 1 lakh car project.

Sources in Hooghly district administration said the Tata team was accompanied by a team from West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) and the district land acquisition department.

The land department was conducting an informal survey to identify around 1,000 acres of single-crop land for the project, government sources, said.

"There was no violence, no 'gherao', in other words there was no incident which deserves a comment from the company", said a source in Tata Motors. A state government official claimed that the local residents were there to meet the delegation and not to stage any protest.

Villagers wanted their land to be identified correctly according to the cropping pattern and also conveyed their expectations from the project if it came up there, government sources, said.

District administration sources, however, said that most of the 1,000 acres examined and possibly identified for the project was dual and multi-crop land. Most of the land is used to grow potato. Besides, seasonal vegetables like cauliflower are also grown in the area, the land department source added.

"The land owners earn reasonable income from their landholding and so there is valid reason for them to be angry if the government wants to acquire the land," a district administration official admitted.

According to the official, the area also had several cold storages along with residential premises. "Most of the harvested potato is shipped to Kolkata from this area," the official added.