By Special CorrespondentKOLKATA: Faced with the likelihood of the Tata Motors pulling out of Singur, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has written to Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Group, requesting him to consider resumption of work by the company at the project site for which his government will be providing all necessary assistance.
Mr. Bhattacharjee has assured Mr. Tata that the safety and security of the personnel of the Tata Motors would be ensured by his administration once the company resumed work at the project site, State’s Industries Minister Nirupam Sen said. The future of the Singur project is in peril following suspension of construction and commissioning work there by the Tata Motors since September 2 in view of the continuing confrontation and agitation outside the site. The decision to stop work was taken to ensure the safety of the company’s employees and contract labour in the wake of an agitation on the issue of land acquisition for the project.
Mamata Banerjee, chief of the Trinamool Congress that has been spearheading a movement in support of its demand for the return of 300 acres of land from within the project site to farmers who have not taken compensation for their plots acquired, threatened at a rally at Singur that she could resume her agitation. The agitation launched outside the project site on August 24 was lifted following talks between its leaders and the State government in the presence of the Governor, Gopalkrishna Gandhi on September 7. Ms. Banerjee later cautioned that the agitation was only “suspended and not withdrawn.”
The State government has told the Tata Motors that it hoped that the project at Singur would come up as a large majority of the farmers (nearly 11,000 out of the 13,000) whose land had been acquired for it wanted it so, Mr Sen told journalists after a meeting of the State Secretariat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Only a small section of the farmers were engaged in the agitation for return of land from within the project site and “we feel the verdict of a majority of people in a democratic society should be honoured,” Mr. Sen said.
“The Tata Motors, we feel, should consider the opinion of the large majority of the people at Singur,” he said.
It was this section of the people “whether they belong to Singur or elsewhere in the State which is keenly waiting for the project to come up in West Bengal,” he added.Mr. Sen said that the government had not received any communication of a “final decision” on the future of the project from the Tata Motors but it was keen to provide all the necessary security to the company’s personnel.“Since the start of work the State government has taken all steps to ensure the security of all the company’s workers and will continue to do so in the future,” he asserted.(END) Source: The Hindu
কোন মন্তব্য নেই:
একটি মন্তব্য পোস্ট করুন