No more industry on Singur land, says Mamata

“I will have to abide by the Supreme Court order. If this land is to be returned to all the land owners how can there be a factory?” the chief minister said while talking to the media.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday virtually ruled out any possibility of an industry coming up on the land acquired by the erstwhile Left Front government for Tata Motors at Singur in Hooghly district.

Hailing the Supreme Court verdict in the Tata Motors’ Nano project case as a “landmark victory”, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said she had “tears of joy” on learning about the decision. (Ashok Nath Dey/HT Photo)

She was reacting to the Supreme Court order which said the whole land acquisition process was illegal.

“I will have to abide by the Supreme Court order. If this land is to be returned to all the land owners how can there be a factory?” the chief minister said while talking to the media.

She said a special meeting will be held at the state secretariat on Thursday where the government will work out a strategy on this issue.

Read: Mamata describes the Singur acquisition as a historic suicide

“We are yet to get details of the Supreme Court verdict. We will study it and finalise a strategy on how to implement the order,” the chief minister said.

She added that neither she nor the government would adopt a vindictive approach towards the Tata Group with whom the state government had been involved in a legal battle since 2011.

File photo of the Singur land agitation. After the Singur movement, followed by a similar agitation in Nandigram, the land acquisition agitation snowballed into a major issue in the state and brought the Trinamool to power in 2011. (Prateek Choudhury/HT Photo )

“I had never been vindictive towards the Tata Group. When I was the Union railway minister I granted orders through tender to the Tata Group. Even now the group is involved in a number of projects in West Bengal. There is no scope for enmity,” she said.

Banerjee said she will hold her next administrative review meeting at Singur on September 14. “On the very same day there will be another victory celebration in Singur,” she added.

Read: Song, dance and sweets mark Singur’s victory celebrations

The chief minister said there will be block-level celebrations and cultural activities across Bengal on September 2, the day 11 central trade unions will observe a nationwide strike against policies of the Union government.

She said there will be large- scale industrial development in Bengal in the coming days. “Industries are dying everywhere. But I can assure you that Bengal will the industrial and investment destination in the days to come,” she iterated.