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Discord over return of Singur land

Special Correspondent

Chief Minister expresses inability to make available more than 70 acres from within the project site

— Photos: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and (below) Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Bannerjee coming out after a closed-door meeting on the Singur issue.

Kolkata: A meeting between Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee here on Friday to find a way out of the tangle over providing land from within the Tata Motors project site at Singur to those farmers who have not received compensation fell through with the two leaders failing to reach a consensus on the acreage of land to be made available.

While Ms. Banerjee stuck to her demand for providing the farmers 300 acres (of a total of 400 acres) from within the site area, the Chief Minister reportedly expressed his government’s inability to make available more than 70 acres from the area if the integral nature of the project’s auto-cluster was to be kept intact.

The Tata Motors authorities have made it clear that the nature of the integrated auto cluster comprising the mother plant and vendor park should be maintained. The company had earlier been assured by the State government that the previously agreed upon arrangement would not be disturbed.

The meeting was the third between the two leaders in six days. They had participated in two rounds of discussions chaired by Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on September 7.

Ms. Banerjee said after Friday’s meeting that the “agreement” that had been arrived at in the previous round in the presence of the Governor had “stated that maximum land being demanded by us will be provided from within the project area.”

“I will still ask the State government to abide by the gentleman’s agreement and we hope it is not violated. It is only proper that an agreement signed in the presence of the Governor is implemented and we hope that the government will do so… We, on our part, will honour the agreement,” the Trinamool chief said. The Chief Minister did not comment on the outcome of the talks.

The two sides had reached a consensus on September 7 that a committee be set up to “ascertain the scope and settle the modalities” for providing land to the farmers concerned.

It was agreed that the State government would respond to the demands of the farmers who had not received compensation “by means of land to be provided to the maximum within the project area and the rest in adjacent areas as early as possible.”

The committee, comprising representatives of both the sides, held its third round of talks earlier in the day when the State government placed a fresh proposal to break the deadlock on the issue of land to be provided from within the site. The suggestion came in the wake of talks with the Tata Motors authorities.

In another development the Calcutta High Court directed the State government not to make public for two weeks the full text and the annexure of the tripartite agreement pertaining to the project between the Tata Motors, the State government and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation.

The ruling by Justice Dipankar Dutta, followed a writ petition by Tata Motors stating that it would be detrimental to the interests of the company if the State’s Chief Information Commissioner disclosed the text of the agreement signed in March 2007. The next hearing is to be held in the coming week.

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