After protests, Mamata for shifting wagon factory to Singur

SINGUR - Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee Thursday asked the West Bengal government to hand over 600 acres of land in Singur for relocating a proposed wagon factory which is facing anti-land acquisition protests in Howrah district’s Sankrail area.

Four days after state Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee held a meeting in this rural belt that was once slated to host the small car Nano project, Banerjee told a rally here: “I have been asking the state government to hand over 600 acres of land to the railways. If they do that, the railways will set up a wagon factory there.”

Banerjee’s comments are diametrically opposite of Bhattacharjee’s remarks during his Jan 9 visit to Singur.

“Come what may, we will set up industry in Singur if the people so wish. We are trying hard to set up the industry there as soon as possible,” Bhattacharjee said Sunday on his first visit over two years after Tata Motors announced Oct 3, 2008, that the world’s cheapest car would not roll out from here.

The automobile giant had to abandon their plans to bring out the car from the plant after two years of a sustained and often violent peasant agitation spearheaded by the Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. The agitators had demanded return of 400 acres out of the 997.11 acres acquired for the project to farmers from whom land was allegedly taken against their will.

Asking the government to return the land, Banerjee said Thursday: “I have repeatedly told them (the state government) to return 400 acres of the land to the unwilling farmers. We will set up the factory on the remaining land.”

The political rivals in the state have been plotting tit for tat strategy with forcible land acquisition being the common plank.

Villagers allegedly backed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist have been opposing a railway project on 630 acres of farmland in Sankrail in Howrah district. The landlosers have been demanding more compensation and jobs in the railways.