Agencies/Kolkata

Mamata Banerjee
Lawmakers in West Bengal yesterday agreed a draft law to restore land to farmers who were forced to sell up to make way for a factory to build the world’s cheapest car, the Tata Nano.
The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill 2011, passed in the West Bengal state assembly, provides for the return of land to those who had not already accepted compensation.
Tata Motors had poured $350mn into the site at Singur but pulled out after violent protests by the state opposition party and farmers who said their land was stolen.
West Bengal is currently controlled by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress party, which was at the forefront of the protests at the site, 35km west of Kolkata.
Banerjee told the state assembly that the bill, which still needs to be ratified, would “undo the injustice meted out to the farmers whose land was forcefully acquired” in a deal with the state’s then-Marxist rulers.
“Land could be returned if the farmers are willing to take it back and the remaining land would be used for setting up industries,” she added.
The opposition communists staged a walkout alleging that the government had misled the assembly, flouted constitutional norms and that the bill had several legal loopholes.
Hours after Banerjee was sworn in as the chief minister on May 20, the state cabinet’s first decision was to return the land to the farmers.
The Trinamul Congress, decimated in the 2006 assembly polls, saw its political graph climb sharply after it spearheaded a peasant agitation against the state government’s acquisition of land for the Nano project.
An air of festivity prevailed across the plant site, as the news of the passage of the bill was flashed across news channels. Jubilant Trinamul supporters showered green ‘gulaal’, or coloured powder, on each other and offered sweets.
“We are happy that our movement against the forceful land acquisition has borne fruit. We are just waiting for the day when we get back our land,” said a farmer who had been unwilling to give up his land.
The Singur plant became a symbol of the clashing interests of farmers and industry in modern India.
After withdrawing from Singur in 2008, Tata Motors set up a new plant in the western state of Gujarat.
Tata Motors said in a statement that it would study the bill and “take appropriate steps.”
The company said some 2,000 people would have been directly employed at the plant and 10,000 others would have indirectly benefited, while the surrounding area would have seen industry revitalised.
“It was an immensely painful decision for the company to pull out the project, forced by the circumstances that prevailed,” it added.