West Bengal CM Adhikari promises to bring Tata Group back to state, promises industrial growth; bangs TMC, left | Today’s news
West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government would bring the Tata Group back to the state and accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and Left regimes of either forcibly acquiring land or indulging in “photoshoots” in the name of industrialisation.
At a press conference in Kolkata today, Adhikari promised to revive Bengal’s industrial fortunes, adding that his government would attract investment opportunities and create jobs without repeating the mistakes that sparked the Singur and Nandigram agitations.
Adhikari said, “We will bring the Tatas back to Bengal,” referring to the conglomerate whose small car project at Singur in Hooghly district was shifted to Gujarat in 2008 after a long dispute over land acquisition.
He also launched an attack on the TMC, alleging that former CM Mamata Banerjee’s government had spent years making claims about industrial revival without yielding tangible results. He added: “We don’t want to indulge in lies and hold photo shoots like the previous government did to attract industry.”
Bengal CM remarks on land acquisition
Commenting on the contentious issue of land acquisition, Adhikari said the BJP government was working on a policy framework but stressed that industrial growth could not come at the expense of farmers’ rights.
He added, “The government is working on its land acquisition policy. We are against forcible land acquisition like what happened in Singur and Nandigram during the erstwhile Left Front regime. At the same time, we are also against the TMC policy of doing nothing and just holding photoshoots and spreading lies about bringing in industries.”
The Bengal CM also mentioned that the BJP government will take a balanced approach aimed at ensuring industrial development as well as public approval.
Bengal project of Tata Motors
The Singur controversy surrounding Tata Motors’ proposed small car plant remains a landmark in West Bengal’s political landscape. The anti-land acquisition movement became a major rallying point for Mamata Banerjee and the TMC, helping them secure victory in the 2011 assembly elections and ending the Left Front’s 34-year run in power.
According to media reports in 2006, the Left Front government acquired nearly 1,000 acres in Singur for Tata Motors to build the “world’s cheapest car”. However, the opposition led by Banerjee’s TMC launched a massive protest, claiming that the fertile land with many crops should not be used for factories.
A decade later, the Supreme Court ruled that the land acquired by the West Bengal government for the Tata Motors factory must be returned to the farmers. While setting aside an earlier order passed by a Calcutta court that upheld the acquisition, the Supreme Court noted that the process by which 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of land in Singur was acquired was “shocking” and a “farce”.
The agitation turned Singur into a political battleground. On 3 October 2008, Ratan Tata officially announced the end of the project and shifted it to Sanand in Gujarat. Additionally, the company asked the then West Bengal government for compensation for an investment of over $300 million and said it would not relinquish the land.
