With production starting on Wednesday at Tata Motors Nano factory at Sanand in Gujarat, West Bengal minister for commerce and industries Nirupam Sen admitted that the state government was as much responsible for the death of the project in West Bengal as the Trinamool Congress which launched an agitation against it.
??Yes, the buck stops here. As commerce and industries minister I cannot but admit responsibility for the closure of the project. It was my failure, I must say. We could not flaunt governance to implement the project,?? Sen said, with his voice tinged with sorrow.
On Wednesday The new plant at Sanand was inaugurated by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata on Wednesday, who seven years ago dreamt of making an affordable family car for the common man.
It was in October, 2008, that Tata, at a press conference in Kolkata declared that Tata Motors was folding up its project at Singur in Hooghly district because of continuous violence unleashed by the Trinamool Congress and it would be shifted to another state.
While states like Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattishgarh etc have offered sites, the Tatas opted for Gujarat to set up the project there.
Today Sen also held the Tatas to some extent for the failure of the project to take up. ??Investors have also a role to play (for the setting up of a project). The investors at Posco can wait. There are other investors waiting elsewhere….maybe they (Tatas) had a compulsion. That is why they had left,?? Sen said.
He also gave broad indications that the Tatas would keep the land at Singur with them. ??They have been regularly paying lease rents. I don?t want to say anything more,?? the minister said.
But Ratan Tata had always maintained that the Tatas were ready to part with the land provided the state government paid them adequate compensation.
Sen rued that with project going to Gujarat, industrialisation process in the state had suffered a major setback. ??Today the factory was set up at Gujarat without any hassles. And a large section of jobless in West Bengal were deprived of huge employment opportunities. Who will pay for the colossal loss??? Sen asked.
After winning the assembly elections in 2006 the West Bengal government entered into an agreement with Tata Motors for setting up the small car project on a 1,000-acre plot at Singur. Subsequently, the land was acquired despite colossal opposition from a large section of local farmers who refused to accept the price of the land acquired by the government. Later the TMC joined issue demanding that the factory should be set up on 600 acres and the remaining 400 acres should be returned to unwilling farmers.
The agitation turning violent and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee undergoing a 26-day hunger strike, Tata finally withdrew the project from West Bengal.