Singur divides businessmen as Tata Motors faces fresh Trinamul fire

Processions by the opposition Trinamul Congress (TC) in Singur town and Singur station prevented many workers from reporting for work at the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car plant on National Highway 2 near Singur, 40km from here, even as industry associations failed to agree on a policy to tackle the unexpected revival of political opposition to the project.

Sources involved in the project who did not wish to be named indicated that attendance was down around 30 per cent but said pending work like paving of the factory premises and internal roads were progressing on schedule.

In Kolkata today, chambers of commerce failed to agree even to hold a meeting called to condemn the opposition to the Tata projects, with at least three bodies stating that it would not be proper for the business community to get involved in what was essentially a political conflict between the Left Front’s government in West Bengal, and TC, which had won the all the local seats around Singur in the recent state panchayat elections.

With the panchayat bodies in TC hands, the factory was also unlikely to get the necessary gram panchayat and panchayat samity clearances for high tension power supply, water and sewage connections and effluent treatment, sections of the business community pointed out.

A section of the business community here warned the Singur situation could get worse if Tata Motors persisted in its position of not recognizing the politically dominant TC or even meeting the party.

TC supremo Mamata Banerjee recently announced a programme to build protest platforms all around the plant site and hold continuous protests there from August 24.

TC was demanding return of 350-odd acres to the families which had refused to accept the acquisition of their land and had not taken Rs 100 crore or so worth of compensation for the land now inside the plant premises. Calcutta High Court had earlier upheld the acquisition of land by the state government and rejected a petition filed on the issues by TC.

“The positive thing is that Tata Motors now has three weeks to pacify TC leadership and work out a solution”, said a businessman on the committee of one of the chambers of commerce which pulled out of the August 5 meeting.

The state government had indicated that it could discuss all issues, including an additional tranche of compensation for the unwilling land losers as well as possible jobs for more local youth, but refused to discuss return of the land as it would break up the plant site and lead to closure of the plant.

TC had rejected this overture, made a week ago by the state industries minister Nirupam Sen. One other problem faced the Tata factory at the site: the state government had failed to deepen and improve the three streams flowing through and around the plot to drain away rain water, but as the monsoon had been weak, the site had not been flooded yet.