Mamata: Tatas can stay if… Trinamul sets terms, CM rules out pullout

Mamata Banerjee has declared she does not want the Tatas to leave Singur, tying her first-ever gesture of accommodation to familiar conditions the government said could not be fulfilled.

“I am not opposed to industrialisation. That is why I don’t want the Tatas to leave Singur. Instead, I am offering a solution…. Let the Tatas negotiate with the state government to return 400 acres forcibly acquired from unwilling poor farmers,” she told a news conference.

“We have already identified a patch of land opposite the automobile plant where ancillary units can easily be shifted,” she added.

The government ruled out returning the land but chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee sought to calm rising fears that the Tatas’ patience was wearing thin following violence and the threat of an indefinite siege from August 24.

“Rest assured. Neither the Tatas… nor the state government will withdraw from there. For the sake of the jobless youth of the state… there will be not only one Singur but many Singurs to host more automobile and other manufacturing units,” Bhattacharjee told a party event.

The statements from the two ends of the political spectrum need not mean that the storm clouds over the Singur project have lifted.

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