A day after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the agreement signed between Tata Motors and the Left Front government for the Nano project in Singur could be put in the public domain as early as today, commerce and industry minister Partha Chatterjee today hinted the process might get delayed because of legal complications.
“There are some legal complications which we hope will be sorted out soon. We have discussed all related issues to the agreement with our officials. We have collected all the papers and will show all these to our Chief Minister,” Partha Chatterjee said after a meeting with West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) officials here.
The state government is also taking opinion of its legal department on this. “I have seen the papers. I am consulting with all the concerned departments including the legal department,” he said.
Incidentally, an application under Right to Information (RTI) had been filed in 2008 to make the agreement public. After the Left Front-led West Bengal government made a part of it public, Tata Motors had challenged it and moved Calcutta High Court, which gave an interim injunction and directed Chief Information Commissioner, the appellate authority under the RTI Act, to hear the case. However, there had been no further ruling on this.
When asked whether HC ruling was a hindrance for the government to make the agreement public, Chatterjee said, “We are taking all matters into account. Tata is not the only party involved in this, about 54 vendors were also involved. Though some of them were involved only in paper not in reality. So, we won't be doing anything that creates further complications.”
Though the Chief Minster had said on Wednesday that all documents related to the agreement would be made public in a day or two, her cabinet colleague and Commerce and Industry minister Partha Chatterjee refused to give any deadline for this.
“I am very hopeful. I can not say anything else. I was just asked by our Chief Minister to examine the papers. I am doing that and need some more time for that,” he said.
The demand to make it public was a long standing one, from the Trinamool Congress, when in the opposition. Banerjee yesterday said, it was our commitment to make this agreement public.
