Deshmukh entices Tata with Mamata-free infra

SINGUR - DAY II

Maharashtra today tried to lure Tata Motors’ project to make Nano, even as West Bengal, its current host, fought to retain it with an “alternative plan” that may secure 300 acres allotted a few years ago to a food park project.Uttarakhand and Orissa have already shown interest in the project.

Tata’s bête noire, Mamata Banerjee, remains steadfast in her resolve to start a “satyagraha” against the project from tomorrow.

The project, which will roll out the company’s small car, commonly referred to as the Rs 1 lakh car, has been beset with problems that have been stoked by Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, and Ratan Tata, the chairman of the Tata Group, on Friday threatened to pull the project out of West Bengal.

That prospect has made other states salivate at a time when most of them have been seeking investments with unprecedented fervour.

“We will roll out the red carpet for Tata Motors if it wishes to set up the small car project in any part of the state,” said a statement issued by the office of Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh.

When contacted, Deshmukh said: “We are definitely interested in getting the Nano project, so if the Tatas are thinking about moving out of West Bengal, they should think of Maharashtra as the first choice as the company already has a sizeable presence in the state and it offers many advantages.”

In a lighter vein, Deshmukh said the advantages included not having “leaders like Mamata Banerjee in the state, who will oppose the project of such a kind, which is going to create thousands of direct and indirect jobs”, in addition to sound infrastructure and a vast vendor base. He expressed the confidence that the opposition parties would understand the importance of the project.

Deshmukh said the state could offer Tata Motors land at five or six sites near Pune, Nashik and Nagpur, but was open to any other site that the company preferred.

In Bhubaneswar, the state government today said it would welcome Tata Motors to set up the project in the state if it wanted to do so. “We will consider the proposal if the company approaches us,” Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said.

Orissa industry minister Biswa Bhushan Harichandan added, “If the Tata group comes forward with a proposal, we will consider it favourably.”

The Tata group had acquired 3,100 acres at Gopalpur in the mid-1990s to set up a steel plant which was later shelved. This land remains unutilised, though the company some time back proposed to set up a multi-product SEZ there.

On the possibility of utilizing this land for the Nano project, Harichandan said companies chose sites depending on the availability of water, raw-material and power, among other things, but the Orissa government could take a decision only if there was a proposal from the company.

However, West Bengal wouldn’t let go easily. Senior state government functionaries are believed to be in talks with three investors who had been allotted 300 acres five-six years ago to build a food park. This tract can be given to the farmers whose cause Banerjee is championing.

This site is just a few hundred metres from the Singur site of Tata Motors’ project and had been acquired at Rs 50,000 an acre. The food park has not come up, though the price of the land has shot up to Rs 7-10 lakh an acre. The government is offering to take it back in return for cash and tax incentives. The advantage is that the government needs to negotiate with only the three owners.

Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said late this evening at the CPI (Mparty headquarters that the state was working on an alternative plan and was open to any rehabilitation package to bring peace to Singur, the site of the plant, and pacify the local community and political parties like Trinamool Congress.

“I cannot disclose the alternative plan we have devised to commission the project and meet the opposition demand, but we are working out a solution which I can reveal only after I have met the opposition leaders again. The project would be implemented and it is nearing completion — I am confident there will not be any problem that will drive away Tata from the state but for this I appeal to all opposition parties staging their programmes from August 24 to keep it peaceful and avoid any untoward incident,” Bhattacharjee said.

About the 400 acres in dispute, Bhattacharjee said the government and Trinamool Congress now understood each other’s positions and the government would do everything to rehabilitate unwilling land losers without jeopardizing the project, as this would also help the local people who had received training at ITIs to work at the project.