Singur:
A full year after Mamata Banerjee drove the Tata's Nano project out of Singur, she has now been offered the same land as Railways Minister.
The offer, made by the West Bengal government, can't be easy for Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. He first tried to woo a Chinese carmaker to set up a factory here. Then, he pitched a power plant to BHEL. With nobody biting, he's been forced to offer the 999 acres as the home for a railway coach-making factory.
The government points out that Banerjee has referred often to this idea in public. Now it wants a decision one way or another on the factory.
Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress is being cautious in its response. "On behalf of Mamata Banerjee, we are still demanding that 600 acres of land should be used for the purpose of industry, and the other 400 acres should be returned to the unwilling farmers," says Partha Chatterjee, a spokesperson for the party.
Tata Motors meanwhile says that technically, the land at Singur is still leased to it, and that the West Bengal government cannot allocate it to any other party without resolving outstanding issues with the carmaker. That included compensation for the losses incurred by Tata in moving its Nano factory out of Singur.
The offer, made by the West Bengal government, can't be easy for Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. He first tried to woo a Chinese carmaker to set up a factory here. Then, he pitched a power plant to BHEL. With nobody biting, he's been forced to offer the 999 acres as the home for a railway coach-making factory.
The government points out that Banerjee has referred often to this idea in public. Now it wants a decision one way or another on the factory.
Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress is being cautious in its response. "On behalf of Mamata Banerjee, we are still demanding that 600 acres of land should be used for the purpose of industry, and the other 400 acres should be returned to the unwilling farmers," says Partha Chatterjee, a spokesperson for the party.
Tata Motors meanwhile says that technically, the land at Singur is still leased to it, and that the West Bengal government cannot allocate it to any other party without resolving outstanding issues with the carmaker. That included compensation for the losses incurred by Tata in moving its Nano factory out of Singur.
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