He was reviled by critics in his party as a neo-liberal in disguise but till the end, he retained his belief in secularism and the humanity of Communism.
The CPI-M leader was the chief minister of the state from 2000 to 2011.
The dissent against the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car project at Singur appears to be finally ebbing with the disputed land being reduced to 120 acres vis--vis the earlier level of 330 acres.
Salboni, in West Medinipur district, is where JSW Steel in 2007 said it would be putting up a 10 million tonne a year steel factory, plus a big captive power plant.
Zahir Haq lost his farmland to the Nano factory, but still applied for a car, when bookings for the Tata Motors Rs 1 lakh car opened at Singur on April 9. And he is not alone: an appreciable number of Singur residents booked the Nano through the bank branches in the area, with the State Bank of India branch as the nodal point.
Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday night formally announced suspension of the 15-day indefinite dharna, saying a final agreement has been arrived at by the West Bengal government on the Singur issue."Since the government has found a formula for the solution of the Singur issue officially, I am suspending the dharna," she said from the dharna manch, addressing a big gathering of cheering party supporters.She thanked Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi.
Tata group chairman Ratan Tata on Tuesday virtually ruled out any investment in Singur and said the company would gladly return the land if compensated.
Singur farmers did not want the Tatas to leave as they were upset only with the government package, and today the same farmers were not in the mood for any agitation, Anuradha Talwar, the president of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samiti, said in Kolkata on Monday.
Five armed men sneaked into the project area at on Monday night and beat up security guards with iron rods, police said. Alarmed by screams of the injured other security men rushed to the site but could not nab the attackers. The injured were first taken to Singur Gramin Hospital and then shifted to Walsh Hospital at Srirampore.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had earlier decided to hold a meeting in Singur on February 15.
The orders were imposed after violence broke out on Sunday.
Dozens of people, including 11 policemen, were injured in clashes between Trinamool Congress activists and police during a planned march to prohibitory order-bound Singur where work is on for the Tatas' car project.
State Industry Minister Nirupam Sen, in his first public address in this area since Tata Motors chose it as the site of its new car plant in May 2006, said many companies were poised to follow Tata's lead in setting up shop in Singur.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee also said 800 cheques would be distributed among the farmers who had not taken them earlier
There is a clamour for changing land-use from agriculture to commercial, residential or industrial.
Though Ratan Tata claimed to be 'happy with the progress of work at the proposed car unit in Singur', things were far from peaceful in and around Singur.
Sandipan Chakravortty, managing director, said the facility would have a capacity of half a million tonne, with construction to be completed within nine months of land being handed over to the company.
The Tatas had earlier stated that it could return the land if compensation was offered. Tata Motors last year shifted its small car Nano project from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat after protest by local farmers and political parties.
On Monday, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had rejected the chief minister's offer of talks and stuck to her demand for returning 400 acres of land to 'unwilling' sellers of land.
Gopal Krishna Gandhi played a crucial role in trying to resolve the stalemate at Singur where Tata Motors suspended work on the Nano small car project for almost a month. The stand off between the ruling Left Front and the Opposition Trinamool Congress over acquisition of land for the project had dampened the prospects of Nano-roll out from the state as had been planned earlier.
Leading vendors of the Tata Motors' Nano project intend to set the ball rolling to return their land in the ancillary park area at Singur and said they aim to begin talks with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation on the issue immediately.
"Through the Singur discussions on September 5, 6 and 7, I saw earnest participants showing a rare spirit of accommodation. That spirit needs to be operationalised," a Raj Bhavan release said. Invoking Rabindranath Tagore, the Governor said, Jiban jakhan shukai jai koruna dharai esho (when the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy."
It is easy to spot the trappings of dejection along the now broken Singur roads, after the Calcutta High Court division bench judgment termed the Singur Act, a legislation introduced by the Mamata Banerjee government to recover some land leased to Tata Motors Ltd, as "void and unconstitutional".
Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata said on Tuesday that Tata Motors was ready to return Singur land if West Bengal government compensated the company for the investments it had made, adding that the company had no plans for Singur at the moment.
"Land is limited, land is precious, land holds a special value to farmers and their families. We have to be sensitive to those who lose land to the industry knowing fully well that the industry also needs space. Emprical evidence shows that options other than compulsory land acquisition are also possible," said West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi. Without mentioning Singur even once, his speech at the ICC highlighted the farmers' interest.
Here stood a man who embodied the legacy of whatever Brand Tata stood for, embellished it, and departed into the long night, leaving the brand legacy for others to further enrich, notes R Gopalakrishnan.
The new package put together by intermediaries includes higher compensation for land to land losers and more compensatory wages for registered tenant farmers (called bargadars), unregistered tenant farmers and agricultural labourers, and involvement of Tata Motors in the Singur resolution process, said sources close to the development.
The Calcutta high court has dismissed all the petitions challenging the acquisition of land at Singur for the Tata Motors small car plant.
A division bench of justices Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Mrinal Kanti Chaudhuri passed the order granting continuation of the stay till disposal of the appeal.
Hours after taking charge as CM, Mamata had announced returning 400 acres to 'unwilling' land-losers
China's First Automobile Works and Ural India might get the Singur land to set up an automobile manufacturing plant.
The Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal, which catapulted to power because of the Singur and Nandigram agitations, on Friday decided to withdraw cases filed by previous Left Front regime against activists, including two ministers and a prominent Trinamool Congress MP.
The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, was passed by voice vote along with some amendments brought by the government.
As soon as the news spread last night, the farmers, mostly belonging to villages in the Beraberi-Purbapara and Gopalnagar-Ghospara clusters, decided to celebrate thedevelopment the next day.
Admitting that the bombs were hurled, Chandannagore SDPO Kalyan Mukherjee said the incident occurred at around 2130 hours in the sleepy village of Singur in West Bengal's Hoogly district.
Making a submission in the court of Justice Saumitra Pal, Tata counsel Samaraditya Pal said that 997.11 acre leased to Tatas (lessee) by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (lessor) was not kept idle from the time of execution of the lease deed to the exit from the site by the company.
Tata Motors on Wednesday questioned the modus operandi of West Bengal government in taking possession of the land allocated to it for its small car project Nano in Singur saying all important decisions in this regard were being taken at "night" or "midnight".
While the Tatas had a lease over 645 acres of land, the rest was for ancillary industries and other purposes.
Amid confrontation between Tatas and the West Bengal government over the Singur issue, Plan panel member Arun Maira on Wednesday questioned the group's approach saying corporates should be careful in what sort of land is acquired and how it is converted for industrial purposes.
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