KOLKATA: Terming the agitation led by TMC leading to abandonment of Tata Motors’ Singur project in 2008 as “irrational and populistic”, the CPM on Monday wondered whether the Mamata Banerjee government has the resources to satisfy an arbitration award granted in favour of the company.
Tata Motors shifted its plant to produce small car Nano from Singur in West Bengal to Sanand in Gujarat in October 2008 owing to a land row, when the CPM-led Left Front was in power.
In a regulatory filing, the auto major said on Monday that a three-member Arbitral Tribunal has ruled that the company is entitled to recover from the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation Ltd (WBIDC) Rs 765.78 crore with an interest of 11 per cent per annum from September 1, 2016.
Claiming that the state government is “already in a debt trap,” CPM Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya said, “Now it has no resources to satisfy the award.”
The Trinamool Congress, led by party supremo Mamata Banerjee, had held an agitation in Singur in 2008 alleging forcible land acquisition for the plant by the state government.
Bhattacharya described the agitation as “irrational and populistic” and claimed that the flight of the Tata Motors plant from the state has severely affected the prospects of West Bengal’s economy.
“This has caused serious damage not only to the industrialisation bid but also the social respect of the state,” he told PTI.
CPM state secretary Md Salim claimed that the state is paying for the “arrogance and destructive politics” of the TMC.
“State is paying for the arrogance and destructive politics @MamataOfficial and penalties for demolition of a near-complete manufacturing unit along with the dream of jobseekers,” Salim said in a post on X.
Claiming that the TMC is “anti-farmer”, CPM central committee member Sujan Chakraborty said that the agitation claiming that farmland had been forcibly acquired was only to scuttle the then Left Front government’s bid to bring in industry to the state.
