Govt says the 400 acres demanded by the Trinamool cannot be returned.
The West Bengal government today toughened its stand on the land acquisition controversy regarding the Tata Motors’ small car factory in Singur, even as its main opponent, the Trinamool Congress (TC), led by Mamata Banerjee, appealed to Ratan Tata to listen to the locals, who she said had voted out the ruling Left Front in the panchayat election in May.
“The 400 acres demanded by Trinamool cannot be returned and the Tata Motors’ project is going ahead. Also, the government does not have surplus land to give to the farmers who lost their land to the factory, but is willing to revisit the compensation offer,” State Industries Minister Nirupam Sen said at the government headquarters here.
In response, Banerjee said: “The land has to be returned but this does not mean the Trinamool Congress is against Tata. I appeal to Ratan Tata, in view of the family he represents, to listen to the voice of the local people, who have rejected the Left Front, and not to rely completely on the CPI(M), which misled him and plunged him into the problem at Singur”.
Banerjee said there was surplus land at the project site in Singur as the government, the CPI(M) middlemen and the state agencies had taken over much more land than was required.
She said the Maruti Suzuki factory occupied less land and produced more cars than the proposed Tata Motors’ factory.
In a parallel but unrelated development, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen backed the state’s industrialisation drive at a meeting here today, saying industrialisation was the only way forward for both the state and the country. “We all have to think about the consequences if the Tatas pull out of the project and the signal it will send to other prospective investors,” he said.
Earlier in the day, a worried state government sent Home Secretary Ashok Mohan Chakravarty and Director General of Police AB Vora to the site to meet Tata Motors officials as well as the agitating groups.
The aim was to avoid any violence at the factory site despite opposition by the Krishi Jami Raksha (farmland protection) Committee.
Chakravarty, who later briefed Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, said the Tata Motors officials assured him that the project would go ahead as scheduled and did not indicate that the company could pull out of the site.
