The decision has been prompted today because we do not see any change on the horizon: Ratan Tata.
West Bengal will no longer be the home for the mother plant for the iconic Rs-1-lakh Tata Motors Nano car after Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata told Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee that the situation at the factory site at Singur, 40 km from Kolkata, was not suitable for further work, owing to the agitation led by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and her allies.
The agitation, which began at the end of August, prompted Tata Motors to suspend work at the factory on August 29. Attempts by West Bengal governor Gopal Gandhi to broker an agreement between the government and Trinamool over a fresh land-for-land deal for unwilling land-losers to the project also failed early September.
“We have taken the regretful decision to move the Nano project out of West Bengal. We have taken this with great sadness because we came here attracted by the nature of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government but faced great agitation and aggression from opposing parties led by Mamata Banerjee,” Ratan Tata told reporters here today.
On where the project would be relocated, Tata said: “We have not decided where the plant will be shifted. We have offers from three or four states and wish we had found a congenial environment in West Bengal — it is inappropriate to make statement on the timeline for new factory today and I will announce this later.”
“The decision has been prompted today because we don’t see any change on the horizon. We have a timeline to maintain and have made commitments, so we have to move,” he added.
Sources close to Tata Motors said the company was now looking at a December-end or January launch for what was billed as the world’s cheapest car, from the originally scheduled October. Among the alternative locations for the 5,00,000-vehicle mother plant, the front-runner remains Karnataka, closely followed by Gujarat and Maharashtra.
Sites in each of these locations are now being studied. The three states are believed to have assured the company that they have the land available for industrial use and there would be no need for any acquisition of land from farmers, a critical factor in avoiding further delays in setting up the alternative plant.
For the time being the car will be assembled and rolled out from Tata Motors plants either in Pantnagar (in Uttarakhand) and Pune or from both. These plants could produce around 5,000 Nanos a month (which is lower than the capacity of the Singur plant). Sources said the new mother plant, will take at least another six months to roll out and the losses as a result of shifting of the plant could be Rs 300 crore to Rs 400 crore.
Although he said “we have not lost enthusiasm for investments in West Bengal”, Tata repeatedly criticised Mamata Banerjee and accused her of breaching the rule of law and flouting the legal system, and her alleged statements that “she would not allow a single Nano to roll out of the plant would continue agitating, while our people were assaulted and had bombs thrown at them”.
Even after the company contacted the opposition through a letter in August 2008, Tata said, “The time for talking to the opposition has come and gone — we don’t have more time but we would in future be happy to invest in Bengal.”
When asked whether the land at Singur would be returned, Tata said the issue would be discussed with the state government over the course of time. “We are not party to the land dispute and we have been caught in the fight between the government and the Trinamool,” Tata added.
“I say this with sincerity — Bengal is terrific state with great potential and we came here because we thought we could make a difference. We have acted in good faith and personally had a great desire that we could be part of this part of the country,” Tata said towards the end of the press conference.
Tata, accompanied by Tata Motors Managing Director Ravi Kant and Tata Sons Director R K Krishna Kumar, walked out of Writers’ Buildings after a 90-minute meeting with the chief minister and his industries minister Nirupam Sen and some select bureaucrats, all of whom failed to convince Tata that work at the factory could resume under police protection.
Local reports indicated extremely high tensions at Singur where many residents were upset that the factory was moving out, more so as over 10,000 of the 12,000-odd land losers had given up land for the project voluntarily.
