Tatas could have been more accommodative to solve Singur: Cong

Kolkata, Oct 5 (PTI) The Congress Sunday said that the Singur crisis could have been solved had the Tatas been accommodative in giving up land more than 70 acres from within the 1,000-acre Nano project area to the unwilling farmers.

West Bengal Pradesh Congress spokesman and senior party
leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay said in a statement that giving up
some more land on part of Tatas was possible considering that
the company had been manufacturing at least 10 different
models in its factory at Pune whose land area measured only
1050 acres.

Bandyopadhyay, chairman of the Standing Committee on
Commerce and Industries of West Bengal Assembly, who had
visited the Tata Motors factory in Pune in November, 2006,
argued that if 10 models could be manufactured in the
1050-acre area, how much land could be required to produce a
single model?

"On a 1050-acre land the Tatas are manufacturing at
least 10 models of car - Safari, Indica, Sumo, Fiesta and
heavy and medium vechiles like trucks. But to produce just one
model of car the company has acquired 997.11 acres of fertile
farmland of which 645.67 is the core area to produce the car,"
he claimed.

This proved, he said, that more than 70 acres of land,
which the government had agreed to return from the project
area, could have been returned to the unwilling farmers.
"So, the crisis could have been solved if the Tatas had been
willing to return the land."

"The people of the state are now realising that due to
lack of farsightedness on the part of the Left Front
government and reluctance of the Tatas to solve the problem,
the Singur motor car project could not take off," he said.

Bandyopadhyay said his party would launch a movement, if
necessary, to press for return of land forcibly acquired from
the farmers in Singur.

The state government, he felt, should now take the
initiative to bring other interested big industrialist to set
up industry at Singur as the Tatas had decided to pull out.