The West Bengal government today toughened its stand on the land acquisition controversy around the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh factory in Singur, even as its main opponent, the Trinamul Congress (TC) under Mamata Banerjee, appealed to Ratan Tata to listen to the voice of the local people who had voted out the CPI(M) and elected TC representatives in the May panchayat elections, while Nobel winner Amartya Sen said he backed the state’s industrialization drive.
Nirupam Sen, the state’s industries minister, said at the government headquarters at Writers’ Buildings, “The 400 acres demanded by Trinamul cannot be returned and the Tata Motors project is going ahead. Also, the government does not have surplus land to give to the unwilling farmers who lost land to the factory, but would be willing to revisit the compensation offer”.
In response, Banerjee said, “The land has to be returned but this does not mean Trinamul 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, and not to rely completely on the CPI(M) which misled him and plunged him into the problem at Singur”.
Banerjee alleged that there was surplus land at the site at Singur, as the government, CPI(M) brokers and the state agencies had taken over much more land than required.
She said the Maruti Suzuki factory occupied less land and produced many more cars than the proposed Tata Motors Singur factory.
The Singur area had elected TC representatives to all the three levels of the panchayat structure in the May elections in which the Left Front and CPI(M) suffered major setbacks and lost half the districts in the state.
In a parallel but unrelated development, Nobel Prize winning economist economist Amartya Sen said at a meeting here today that industrialization was the only way forward for both the state and the country, adding, “We all have to think about the consequences if Tatas pull out of the project and the signal it will send to other prospective investors”.
In the morning, a worried state government sent the home secretary Ashok Mohan Chakravarty and director general of Police, A B Vora, to the site to meet Tata Motors officials as well as contact agitating groups and opposition parties.
The aim was to secure peace and avoid any violence at the factory site despite the opposition of the Krishi Jami Raksha (farm land protection) Committee.
Chakravarty, who later briefed chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, said that the Tata Motors officials at Singur assured hom the project would go ahead as scheduled and did not indicate in any way that the company could pull out of the site.
The state had recently posted 850 more policemen at the site citing a threat from Naxalites and was expected to raise the number further by August 24, from which date TC would be building a series of protest platforms around the site to protest the forcible acquisition of land and to demand the return of 400-odd acres to farmers whose land had been forcibly acquired.