Uttarakhand govt allots 50 acres more to Tatas

The Uttarakhand government has allotted 50 acre extra land to Tata Motors Ltd at its Pantnagar manufacturing facility for residential purposes, a government source said. “The decision was taken on Friday at Dehradun.

Tata Motors would develop residential plots in these 50 acres,” the source said. Tata Motors has been seeking 100 acre for residential purposes. The decision to allot extra land to Tata Motors comes at a time when speculation is rife that the company is shifting its Nano small car project from Singur in West Bengal to Pantnagar. The automobile major already manufactures Ace, Magic and Winger vehicles at its 1,000-acre Pantnagar facility.

Meanwhile, Tata Motors Ltd has not yet intimated the Uttarakhand government on producing its Rs 1 lakh Nano car at Pantnagar facility, a senior official from the state’s nodal industrial promotion agency, said today.

“There has been no intimation from the company for making the Nano from the Pantnagar manufacturing unit,” said S K Sharma, deputy general manager, projects, State Infrastructure and Industrial Development Corporation (SIIDC) of Uttarakhand.

Sharma said it is binding on the company to inform the nodal agency before rolling out any new product from the Pantnagar facility. “They (Tata Motors) have to inform us before they start putting up manufacturing lines for the Nano,” he said. The information comes at a time when it is being widely speculated that Tata Motors has planned to shift its Nano project from trouble-ridden Singur.

Tata Motors’ plans to set up its Nano manufacturing facility in Singur has run into trouble as farmers have been asking the company to return their land. Tata Motors had earlier indicated that it plans to commercially launch the Nano during the Dussehra festival in October. “The pace of production has been ramped up and we will honour the October schedule,” a company spokesperson had said earlier.

However, the company is not seen meeting the deadline of October because of the ongoing protest by farmers in Singur.