The company wrote to the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-led Left front government seeking clarification on the agreement in the wake of conflicting reports about the return of project land to farmers. A Tata group spokesperson confirmed that the company had written a letter to the government.
A year later, land prices are less than half the peak levels of Rs 20 lakh an acre.
Majority gram sabhas pass resolution to oppose SIR status to the area where Maruti's proposed unit is to come up.
'We want to make Bengal an automobile hub.'
According to party sources, the situation is more or less beyond repair. "We can forcibly remove Mamata Banerjee's agitators from Singur within a few hours. But it seems the Tatas have developed cold feet. After whatever has happened over the last few weeks, it is almost impossible to convince the Tatas to stay back in Bengal and restart the Nano project," said a central committee leader of the party.
Nano vendors say if all-India bookings cross 500,000, Tata Motors may have to explore the option of having a satellite plant to its present mother factory at Sanand near Ahmedabad. Many who had taken up space at the vendor park in Singur, the centre of the main dispute with the give-us-our-land-back agitationists led by the opposition Trinamool Congress, are hanging on in this hope.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the West Bengal government not to return land to farmers in Singur, that was earlier leased to the Tatas, for now.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
Sajjan Jindal, vice-chairman and managing director of JSW Steel and one of West Bengal's most valued investors, said that he would have compensated unwilling farmers with double the land 800 acres next door in return for land for the Tata Motors factory at Singur.
The West Bengal chief minister did not have anything new to offer to Singur and its people, except that the site would be used for an industrial project.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has said that the decision of the Tata Group to withdraw from the Singur project was a colossal one.
According to the lease agreement between Tata Motors and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, the lessor will have the option to terminate the lease if the land has not been used for three years or more, which will kick-in from October 2011. Tata Motors had pulled out of the Nano project in October 2008.
The Calcutta high court asked West Bengal government on Friday to explain land acquisition process for Tata Motors plant at Singur, a project that has set off a political storm.
There is a flicker of hope for Tata Motors' abandoned Singur site. A team from government-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) visited the place, along with state government officials, for a possible project with the West Bengal Power Development Corporation.
The Indian industry on Wednesday offered to play the peacemaker in the land row in West Bengal, parts of which have been witnessing violent protests by farmers against acquisition of land for industrial purposes.
Social activist Medha Patkar and Trinamool Congress chief Mamta Banerjee continued their hunger strike on Tuesday while TC threatened to launch a long-drawn movement against the Tatas' proposed car project on a farmland in Singur.
Tata Motors has more than doubled its investment plans for the small car project in Singur in West Bengal.
According to insiders, police 'have left no stone unturned in dissuading Mamata from conducting the Wednesday meeting.
The police, however, cited no reason for their arrest.
The resolution said the government should talk to the Tatas and return the lands of farmers who had not been willing to part with them and who had not availed of compensation.
Tata Motors on Thursday clarified that it has no intention to back out of the Singur deal where it plans to set up a plant to manufacture the Rs100,000 car.
The automobile firm's response came in reply to an earlier specific query of the apex court asking it to make its stand clear over the allotted land in the wake of changed scenario as the company had already moved its car plant to Gujarat.
Having been outwitted by Trinamool Congress' Mamata Banerjee after she sent the Tata Nano car project packing from West Bengal by demanding that land be returned to unwilling farmers, the Communist Party of India-Marxist is getting ready to do a Singur on Banerjee.
The Tata Motors notice, dated June 18, which was pasted on the gate of its erstwhile Nano factory at Singur, was aimed at intimating that no Tata Motors official was based at the site and any unannounced visit should not be made at odd hours since the factory housed valuable items.
Farmers are gettong ready for another agitation.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Wednesday said he had called Tata Motors Chairman Ratan Tata and urged him to resume work at Singur.
Irked by constant intimidation of its workforce by agitating party workers, the company had yesterday evacuated the manpower from Singur. "There has been no improvement in the ground situation so far, hence the conditions are still not conducive for resuming work today," a Tata Motors spokesperson said. "We continue to assess the situation closely," he said.
The West Bengal government's new compensation package for 'unwilling' farmers in Singur, 40km from Kolkata, might have been praised by Tata Motors, but those involved in land transactions in the area find the offer inadequate.
West Bengal Governor M K Narayanan on Monday said he had thought that the Singur legislation did not require Presidential approval, three days after the Calcutta high court ruled it as constitutionally invalid and void.
In a setback to the Mamata Banerjee government, Calcutta High Court had ruled on June 23 that the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011, introduced by her government to recover land leased to Tata Motors in Singur for its small car project was constitutionally invalid and void.
Tata Ryerson, a 50:50 joint venture between Tata Steel and US-based Ryerson Inc, is investing Rs 120 crore (Rs 1.2 billion) for the Tata Motors' small car project at Singur.
'One Sandeshkhali won't turn around women's perception of Mamata Banerjee in this state'
Cricketer Yusuf Pathan will contest from the Baharampur Lok Sabha seat, whereas Kirti Aazd will fight from the Bardhaman-Durgapur constituency.
A team of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday held on-spot inquiries in Sandeshkhali to ascertain facts about alleged sexual abuse by some Trinamool Congress leaders even as fresh agitation rocked the trouble-torn village, where locals torched the property of accused Trinamool leaders and held demonstrations against the delay in arresting the main accused, Shahjahan Sheikh.
Work continued to be stalled at the Tata Motors small car plant in Singur on the ninth day of the Trinamool Congress' indefinite dharna as the management said conditions were not conducive for resuming work.
BJP IT department head Amit Malviya shared on Twitter what he said were the details of accidents under these ministers and added such 'worthies' are the ones demanding the resignation of the 'most qualified' railway minister the country has had in seven and half decades.
In a ruling which can have far-reaching consequences, the Supreme Court on Wednesday set aside the controversial acquisition of 997.11 acres of land in Singur in 2006 by the then Left Front government in West Bengal to set up Tata Motors' ambitious Nano car manufacturing plant.
'The TMC did not bother telling me, a sitting MLA for 20 years, why I was not being given a ticket.'
In power, Mamata Banerjee has tried to bury the ghost of the past, but it might still be work-in-progress. Big-ticket and eye-grabbing (in terms of investment size) projects are still few and far between, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
At the height of the agitation against Tata Motors and after, the decibel level at Singur has always been high. The coronavirus scare, however, appears to have tempered it. The lockdown has hit Singur's inhabitants hard in more ways than one, reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
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