On a cloudy monsoon morning, a crowd of farmers and others fell very still on early Wednesday morning at Singur when the Block Development Officer told them he had no land titles to offer them. The Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government had to disappoint the people gathered in front of the district magistrate’s office despite the local administration having worked overnight to prepare the land deeds for the twelve farmers from the Tata Nano project land. State industry minister Partha Chatterjee was to lead the group of 12 to the office of the district magistrate.
At heart was the Supreme Court order that has provided interim protection to the rights of Tata Motors till the disposal of the main matters pending before the Calcutta High Court. The order was passed on a Special Leave Petition filed claiming a stay on the distribution of land.
However, the court did not go into the details of a new controversial law (the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011) enacted by the West Bengal legislature as the high court is still hearing the case.
During the hearing of the Tata’s plea, the bench observed that the issue is not about winning a political point by the state government but a question of rights. However, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she welcomed the Supreme court order. It will go in favour of the farmers and in favour of the people,? she said.
Trinamool cadre explained to the farmers that the Supreme Court order has not stopped the land survey or the process of distribution of land in Singur. “The apex court only said that distribution of land will be stopped till the Calcutta High Court passes its judgement on the case in a month,” Banerjee said.
In fact, the government, anticipating a Supreme Court order against distribution, tried to return a token amount of land to unwilling farmers before the order. Pratima Das, chief of Singur Panchayat Samiti, said. ?The high powered committee on Singur land return, headed by the state industry minister [Das is also in the committee] had apprehensions of such an order from the Supreme Court but we wanted to give back a token 3.94 acres before any such order was pronounced. The order came too early before we could give back any land and so our plan failed.?