Mamata government dismantles Nano site. Tata yet to respond

Sulagna Sengupta | Updated on: 10 February 2017, 1:46 IST

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As the Bengal govt waits to hear from Tata group, Nano factory starts getting dismantled

Bengal government takes concrete steps towards dismantling Nano factory

The Bengal government on Monday started the process of removing materials of the Tata car factory that were lying in the proposed site. The Tata group, however, is yet to respond about the compensation package they want from the state government, even after state finance minister Amit Mitra personally spoke with the Tata officials in this regard.

The Tata group has been given 10 days to remove their materials from the Singur site.

The state public works department (PWD) has already made an assessment of the materials that were lying at the site pegging it with an estimated worth of Rs 506 crore. This includes the materials that had been used to set up ancillary industries.The state government is now waiting for the final call from the Tata group.

Partha Chatterjee, state parliamentary affairs minister, said, "We are waiting a final call from the Tata group on what they want as a compensation package."

On Monday morning state PWD officials, land and land reforms department officials along with the district magistrate, Sanjay Bansal, convened a meeting before instructing officials to start pulling up the materials - including the shed of the proposed car factory.

The materials of the proposed car shed factory will be kept on a 12-acre land of WBIDC for now and will be handed over to the Tata group.

Matter of time

Top officials and bureaucrats said that if the compensation package demanded by the Tata group exceeds that of the estimated government cost, and the state government is not ready to provide the compensation as per their demand, then again state government will have to move court - which is a time-consuming affair.

A senior bureaucrat said, "We have already intimated the matter legally to the Tata group regarding the dismantling of the infrastructure of the proposed site, but we have not received any response yet. We are waiting for a call following which we will decide on the future course of action."

Pay up!

While the entire work of dismantling the factory shed will require around ten days, engineers and agricultural scientists who are working on the plot said that to make the land cultivable or livable it will require more time. This could be the reason as to why Tata might demand a compensation of around Rs 154 crore, which it had paid to the erstwhile Left Front regime while buying land for the project.

A top source said while the company has decided to waive off around Rs 1,246 crore that it has incurred as losses when it had to shift its project to Gujarat, it wants the state to pay the amount that it had shelled out to buy the land in Singur.

However, officials of the Tata Group did not respond on this matter despite repeated attempts from the reporter's side.

On Monday, the lower car shed at the proposed project site was removed. As per records, out of 997.11 acres of land that has been with the Tata group,73 acres of the project area has the proposed Tata Nano project shed, 50 acres of land was under the shed cover of ancillary industries. Waterbodies and water canals occupied 38 acres and 350 acres of land area within the proposed project area was occupied by 20 kilometers of roads.

The land survey of 620 acres of the area within the proposed project site has already been plotted and 9,117 parchas have been delivered.

Edited by Jhinuk Sen

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First published: 19 September 2016, 10:50 IST