"Railways has received a request from the government of West Bengal to set up a coach factory in Singur," Banerjee said while presenting the rail budget for 2010-11 in Parliament.
Minutes after reports emanating from West Bengal indicated that the Singur impasse had finally come to an end with Tata Motors 'agreeing to give land,' the Tatas have expressed distress at the 'limited clarity on the outcome of the discussions between the state government of West Bengal and the representatives of the agitators in Singur.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist should apologise to the people of West Bengal for its "policy mistake" in Singur and Nandigram that was reflected in the Left Front's debacle in the Lok Sabha polls in the state, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said in Ranchi on Monday.
Amid repeated calls to party workers to peacefully hold the indefinite dharna over the Singur land issue, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Sunday said her party did not want the Tatas to leave, but to restrict its small car factory in Singur to 600 acres.
The Trinamool Congress chief sounded almost desperate to take land for setting up industry.
Police said Haradhan Bag (62) was found dead by his family members at his house in the Beraberi Purbapara area of Singur.
American investments in West Bengal are likely to suffer to a certain extent due to the Singur issue.
The chief minister's letter will be reached to the dharna manch (dais) of the Trinamool Congress chief on the second day of her party's indefinite agitation at Singur demanding immediate return of 400 acres to farmers unwilling to part with their land. "The contents of the letter will be made known this afternoon," a source in the chief minister's secretariat said.
Justice Indra Prasanna Mukerji, taking up the Tata Motors' case challenging the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, directed that he would hear it daily from Thursday in the afternoon hours.
The West Bengal Governor-brokered talks between the State government and the Trinamool Congress-led opposition to break the Singur deadlock ended inconclusively on Friday.
The boundary wall has been brought down and makeshift entrances to the unit have come up overnight.
"We will not let Mamata Banerjee's 26-day fast for Singur go waste. I have asked for the lease agreement and all correspondence with Tata Motors by Tuesday," Partha Chatterjee, who took charge as West Bengal commerce and industry minister, said.
In the first sign of forward movement to resolve the impasse on Singur issue, the first round of talks between West Bengal government and Trinamool Congress will be held on September 5.Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi agreed to preside over the talks between a state government panel and a five-member delegation of TC, but he declined to be viewed as a third party mediator.West Bengal government welcomed Mamata's remarks as a positive sign.
Vendors are ready to pull out of Singur and follow Tata Motors, said some of them, a day after Ratan Tata threatened to do so.
The plea for return of land has been made under the new Singur land Rehabilitation and Development Act enacted by the West Bengal government.
Justice Saumitra Pal directed the government to state its opposition by an affidavit to the petition of Tata Motors and also asked Tata Motors Ltd to file a reply to that by July 12.
West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Thursday turned down the Trinamool Congress' demand that the land of the unwilling farmers at Singur, acquired for the Tata Motors small car project, should be returned.
Eight people, including Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samiti convenor Anuradha Talwar and Singur Krishi Jami Rakha Committee convenor Becharam Manna were arrested, Hoogly Police Superintendent Supratim Sarkar said.
Assocham is planning to write a letter to the West bengal chief minister, asking her to bring back the Tatas to regain business confidence.
Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata said shifting the Nano car plant from Singur in West Bengal was a prudent move in hindsight but gave the group a high negative cost.
The project was expected to create employment in excess of 10,000 jobs among vendors and service providers in the vicinity of the plant. When Tata Motors announced the small car project in May 2006, it promised to employ 2,000 people directly initially.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said that she was overwhelmed by the response to her Facebook post on her commitment to side with farmers of Singur. "This has deeply touched my heart ... Your moral support at this juncture is a great source of inspiration to continue our struggle for the cause of farmers," Banerjee, the Trinamool Congress chief, said in a fresh post on Facebook.
With prospects of Nano rolling out from Singur becoming bleak with each passing day, Tata Motors Limited, however, has not yet asked the vendors to wind up operations there.
Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd has expressed its inability to put up the proposed power project at Tata Motors' abandoned Singur site, in a written communication to the West Bengal Power Development Corporation Ltd.
Big vendors left with smaller amounts as formula for compensation based on despatches.
A solution to the Singur issue ran into rough weather on Sunday when Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee raised certain objects after a consensus was understood to have been reached between her party and West Bengal government, a senior minister said.
The surprisingly strong opposition to land acquisition in Singur and earlier events at Nandigram, where local protests forced the government to scrap plans for a chemical hub, have induced investors keen on acquiring land in West Bengal to come up with compensation packages that can only be described as extravagant.
Banerjee in a letter to Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, a copy of which was made available to the press on Tuesday, said, "In the interest of the people and to keep the door open for getting their demands fulfilled, I am sending my colleague and leader of Opposition Partha Chatterjee to you on the demand of return of land of 'unwilling farmers' at Singur."
Accompanied by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation managing director Subrata Gupta and local Trinamool MLA and school education minister Rabindranath Bhattacharjee, Bengal industry minister inspected the entire site and held a meeting with WBIDC officials at a camp office located within the premises.
Commerce Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai speaks to Business Standard on the impact the Tata Motors decision to pull out of Singur will have on the investment climate in the state.
'Investors abroad will think if a big company in India faces such hurdles, what will happen to us. But this is an isolated case. I was in West Bengal a month back and there is a whole series of investments lined up. But investors waiting in the sidelines with their plans to come to India may have second thoughts because of this incident,' says Commerce Secretary Gopal Krishna Pillai.
Value of the land has appreciated manifold after the announcement of the Tata Motors' project at Singur.
After deciding to release 52 political prisoners, the West Bengal government will now withdraw cases filed by the Left Front regime against those who took part in Singur and Nandigram movements, and at Netai, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Thursday.
"We do not have tanks there, but we have people there going to farmers' houses and beating them up and threatening to kill them."
Tata Motors on Thursday said it will have talks with the West Bengal government on the Singur land when the Nano factory was originally slated to come up, a day after state principal industry Secretary Sabyasachi Sen said the world's smallest car would be made there.
Tata Motors owns 1,000 acres in this rapidly industrialising town in the prosperous terai region of the state. About 30 per cent of it is learnt to be vacant.
Even as Tata Motors is racing against time to get its new Singur plant near Kolkata ready for commercial roll-out of the Nano by October 2008, the company may need an out-of-the-box solution to overcome some delays in the integrated plant and component park structure proposed for the vehicle.
West Bengal chief minister, who had a talk with government lawyer Kalyan Banerjee on the apex court order, said the Supreme Court had not stopped the land survey and process of distribution of land in Singur.
The legislation revokes the original lease agreement signed between Tata Motors, the country's biggest automobile maker, and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.
While addressing a rally at Alipurduar, Banerjee accused the Election Commission of removing the deputy inspector general of police of Murshidabad at the behest of the BJP.
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