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CPM chased away Tatas from Singur, not me, says Mamata Banerjee. Oppn hits back
Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister
Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said that it was not her but the then ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPM] government which forced the Tata Motors project out of Singur in 2008.
“Some people are talking rubbish that I had chased away the Tatas and it is the Tatas who are now giving jobs. I did not chase the Tatas away. The CPM drove them away,” Banerjee told a social gathering traditionally held after the Durga Puja festival in West Bengal at Siliguri which was attended by Durga Puja committees from at least eight north Bengal districts.
“You (CPM) went to forcibly acquire the land. We returned the land. There is no paucity of land. Why should we take land forcibly? We have done so many projects but never did we forcibly take any land,” the Trinamool Congress supremo said.
Banerjee’s TMC first came to power in West Bengal after dislodging the Left government in 2011 on the back of the anti-land acquisition movements in Singur and Nandigram.
The previous Left Front government acquired 997.11 acres along National Highway 2 in Singur and handed it over to the Tatas to build its small car manufacturing facility. The TMC-led 2008 agitation in Singur against the forcible acquisition of land forced the Tatas to move to Gujarat.
In 2016, the Supreme Court scrapped the land acquisition order by the state’s erstwhile Left Front government in 2006, holding that the state government’s action was grossly perverse, illegal and void ab initio in law. “Such an exercise of power by the state government for acquisition of lands cannot be allowed under any circumstance,” the three-judge bench ruled.
Ever since her party came to power in 2011, Banerjee has been trying to seek fresh investments and showcase its industry-friendly face. In July 2021, then industry minister Partha Chatterjee underlined that the TMC neither had any enmity with the Tatas nor did it fight them. “The problem was with the Left Front government and its forcible land acquisition,” Chatterjee, who was arrested in July this year in connection with irregularities in the recruitment of teachers, said last year.
Last month, Banerjee inaugurated the ₹600-crore expansion project of the Tata Metaliks at Kharagpur in West Midnapore. The project is expected to generate employment for 1,500 – 2,000 people.
Banerjee’s statement on Wednesday pinning the blame for the Tatas exit on the CPM provoked a sharp comeback.
“I don’t like to listen to the chief minister’s speech nowadays because I feel embarrassed. The chief minister has a D. Litt in telling lies. I won’t be surprised if she says that the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee staged a sit-in-demonstration to drive away the Tatas and triggered a massive state-wide protest to stall the Singur project,” said Sujan Chakraborty, senior CPM leader.
Banerjee’s statements also drew a scathing response from the BJP and Congress.
“This is a big lie before the Diwali celebrations. She drove the Tatas out of the state. She had promised the farmers that she would return the land and that they would be able to do agriculture once again. But after coming to power she never looked back at the farmers of Singur. The TMC and the CPM are the two sides of the same coin,” said Locket Chatterjee, BJP MP.
“UNESCO gave a heritage tag to the Durga Puja. Now she should be given the tag of the biggest liar. Everyone has seen how she chased away the Tatas. She had lied to the farmers of Singur. Now she is lying again,” said Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, leader of the Congress party in the Lok Sabha.
