Date:04/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/04/stories/2008100460131000.htm

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We cannot run a plant with police protection: Tata

Marcus Dam

KOLKATA: Chairman of the Tata Group Ratan Tata said here on Friday that Tata Motors was yet to decide where the Nano car project would be relocated.

“We have got offers from three or four [State] governments that we are exploring. We hope we will able to find a location which has a congenial atmosphere … but really wished we could have had the congenial atmosphere in West Bengal.”

Mr. Tata was addressing journalists after announcing Tata Motors’ decision to pull out from Singur in the interests of the Nano small car project’s success and viability and in the light of the Opposition’s continued and heightened agitation there.

“We believe in what the Chief Minister [Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee] and his government are doing and am exceedingly sorry I faced this experience [at Singur] not with the State government but the circumstances ... I hope we parted as friends,” he said.

Mr. Tata said the decision followed a 90-minute meeting he had with the Chief Minister. He said Mr. Bhattarjee was “very persuasive in his desire not to move the project and I had to explain that the well being of my employees is my responsibility … We cannot run a plant with police protection, when the walls are being broken, bombs being thrown, people being threatened and intimidated,” he said.

Mr. Tata made it clear that the reason to pull out of Singur “was the agitation by the Opposition party led by Mamata Banerjee and not the State government … I hope that West Bengal sees development and not becomes a State that stands still because of agitations … I am bullish about the industrial prospects of West Bengal,” he asserted.

He pointed out “Mamata Banerjee had publicly said that the people of West Bengal have decided they do not want you … I am not pulling out because of some whim or fancy,” he added.

Asked whether the State government’s failure to come down on the Opposition spearheading the agitation resulted in a situation that prompted him to pull out from Singur, Mr. Tata replied: “The government was being damned if they did and damned if they did not.”

Tata Motors suspended work on the Singur project on September 2 in view of the continued confrontation and agitation at the site.

Reacting to the decision of to pull out, Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi said: Like our honourable Prime Minister, I was hopeful of a satisfactory solution. I feel very sad.”