Mamata for coach factory at Singur

Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee today said her ministry was prepared to set up a rail coach factory at Singur, provided 600 acres of the 1,000-acre land earlier acquired by the Tatas to set up the ‘Nano’ factory was made available to it.

The announcement of the project came exactly a year after she launched her indefinite agitation in the village that ultimately drove the Tatas to take away their prized small car project to Sanand in Gujarat. The minister said she wanted to set up the project on a public-private partnership (PPP) model. Similar projects were also lined up for Allahabad and Aleppey.

The project for Aleppey had already made headway, she added. She said the remaining 400 acres could be returned to the farmers who had sold the land to the state government for the Tata project.

Inaugurating the Singur-Howrah Andolan local, which will cover a distance of 34 km, Mamata announced that a project to market vegetables and fruits grown at Ratanpur in Singur would be launched.

She said Singur would be the first place in the country where the project, part of the ambitious Kisan Vision programme envisaged in this year’s Railway budget, would be implemented. On the proposed rail coach factory at Singur, the railway minister said she had already taken up the matter with various Central Government departments.

The railways need more wagons and rakes for increased loading of freight to augment its revenues, she said, while announcing that 18,000 wagons would be acquired during the current year as against 11,000 the previous year.

Besides Singur, Dhanekhali, Kamarkandu, Tarekeswar, Baidyabati, Bandel, Mankundu, Bhadreswar, Nasibpur, Chandangore, Nalikul and Serampore stations, all located in Hooghly district, would be developed as model stations involving an expenditure of Rs 50 lakh each.