Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said CPM had forcefully acquired land in Singur
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a surprising claim today, saying it was not she who had chased Tata Motors out of the state, but the CPM that was in power then. In a strong retort to her comment, CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty told NDTV that Ms Banerjee's statement was a "blatant lie".
Speaking in Siliguri, the Bengal Chief Minister said: "It's all rubbish that I had chased away the Tatas and that it's the Tatas who are now giving jobs here. I did not chase the Tatas away. It is the CPM that had chased them away." She said CPM had tried to forcefully acquire land, which was later returned by her government.
"There is no dearth of land, so why acquire land forcefully?" she asked.
She further said: "We have also done so many projects, but we did not acquire land forcefully."
Reacting to her statement, Mr Chakraborty said: "What Mamata Banerjee said today is a blatant lie and she has exposed herself as a blatant lier. Unfortunately, she's the Chief Minister of Bengal."
Taking a dig at the Bengal Chief Minister, he further said: "She had started her career with a lie, saying that she was 'Doctor' Mamata Banerjee."
Ms Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress (TMC) were catapulted to power in Bengal after the CPM-led Left Front lost the 2011 assembly elections, following the anti-land acquisition agitations in Singur and Nandigram that saw Tata Motors move their Nano car manufacturing plant from Singur to Sanand in Gujarat.
Questioning the veracity of Ms Banerjee's cliam, Mr Chakraborty said: "Does she want us to believe that it was not she who had done a sit-in demonstration against the Tata Nano project? Was it not her party men who had blocked Durgapur Expressway for days during their agitation? Or, does she want us to believe that it was the then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Left workers who had done all that?"
Referring to a comment made by Ratan Tata, the then Chairman of Tata Sons, just before moving the Nano project out of Bengal in 2008, Mr Chakraborty added: "Mr Tata himself said that the 'trigger' had been pulled on the project by Ms Banerjee."
In 2016, the Supreme Court had termed the 2006 acquisition of nearly 1,000 acres of land in West Bengal's Singur as illegal and void. The land was acquired by the then Left Front government for Tata Motors Ltd's plant to build Nano, the world's cheapest car.
While directing the state government to identify the land to be returned to the landowners, Supreme Court had said that compensation paid to landowners will not be recovered by the state government.
After coming to power in 2011, Ms Banerjee's government passed a law to take back the land that the state government had acquired for Tata Motors in Singur.
While speaking in Siliguri today, the Chief Minister sent out a message to all industrialists to create jobs in the state, saying there will be no discrimination against any industrialist in Bengal.
Highlighting the importance of creating more jobs in the state, Ms banerjee said: "A coach factory is coming up in Bengal. The Deocha-Pachami coal industry is one of the biggest in the state. The Tajpur Port is also coming up in Bengal."
She said her government was pushing for Hashimara to be developed into a civil aerodrome.