Most of the vendors, who have renewed their lease for Tata Motors’ proposed Nano car plant at Singur, have decided to go along with the firm?s decision on the issue. On Thursday, the West Bengal government issued an ordinance saying it was taking back the 997 acres of land allotted to the Tatas and vendors citing ?non-performance?.
At a press conference to announce the ordinance, chief minister Mamata Banerjee said the Tatas were free to build something on 600 acres, but that 400 acres would be returned to farmers who parted with their land unwillingly. She said the Tatas had raised the compensation issue in 2009 itself and that her government was also willing to go down that path. ?We will have to set up an arbitrator. We are ready to pay compensation.? A Tata company spokesperson reiterated on Friday that the company wouldn’t comment on the issue and that it had not yet seen the ordinance.
?We are yet to understand the details of the announcement. We will do what Tata Motors does,? said a vendor. According to sources, there are a few vendors who might take up the issue directly with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), which owns the land and had leased it out to the Tatas for 90 years. The Tatas have renewed the lease five times since 2007, paying Rs 1 crore to WBIDC each time. Though the ordinance is yet to be made public, Banerjee has cited the ?non-performance? clause to take back the land because the Tatas didn’t set up the factory though the deal was signed in 2006. It’s another matter that the Tatas couldn’t build the car factory because of the Trinamool Congress-led agitation.
Almost 60 vendors had earlier decided to put up facilities at Singur. Among them were companies such as Caparo Engineering, Bosch Chassis Systems, Gabriel, Lumax Industries, Kinetic Engineering, Rasandik Engineering Industries India Limited, Subros, Tata Ryerson and Tata Auto Components.
According to sources, while 15 of them kept on renewing their lease with WBIDC, some of the vendors have already sought compensation from Tata Motors. While WBIDC had leased 645 acres to Tata Motors to set up its own plant, it earmarked 290 acres in adjacent areas for the vendors. Vendors had directly leased areas, as per their requirement out of the 290 acres, from WBIDC to set up their plants. ?We had started our construction work but we had to stop it after the agitation,? said a vendor. ?We are talking to legal experts whether we can directly approach WBIDC to get the compensation for that. But that will not happen before we receive communication from WBIDC,? the vendor added.