Date:05/08/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/08/05/stories/2008080557791100.htm

National

Trinamool trying to sabotage Tata car project, says Bose

Special Correspondent

KOLKATA: Biman Bose, Secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), has criticised the move by the Trinamool Congress to intensify its stir against the setting up of the Tata Motors’ automobile project at Singur in Hooghly district.

The agitation was aimed at sabotaging the project by inciting violence in the area, Mr. Bose said in a statement issued here on Monday.

The Trinamool Congress was trying its utmost in stirring up unrest through its agitation which defied all norms of democratic protest, he said. He appealed to the people to defeat such designs and take forward the process of industrialisation.

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee had announced indefinite sit-ins outside the project site from August 24 till the land acquired from peasants, allegedly against their consent, was returned to them.

Camps would be set up along the factory walls and Ms. Banerjee would be present in one of them. She had warned the government not to use force against those who would be joining the camps. The agitation would continue till 400 acres “forcibly acquired” from peasants for the project was returned.

The government had received the people’s mandate for industrialisation in the last Assembly election and the Singur project was one of the hall marks of its agenda for greater industrial development, Mr. Bose said.

The Trinamool Congress-led Krishi Jami Raksha (Protection of Farmland) Committee had taken out a procession and organised a rally at Singur on Sunday demanding that the land be handed back to their erstwhile owners.

The first “Nano” cars are expected to roll out of the Tata Motors factory in Singur later this year.