By IANS
Kolkata : Nano, the Rs. 100,000 ($2,500) car Tata Motors unveiled at Auto Expo 2008 in New Delhi Jan 10, overcame a major roadblock at its cradle in West Bengal with the Calcutta High Court Friday ruling the contentious land acquisition in Singur legal and in social interest.
In what is seen as a major victory for the reformist Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee- led Left Front government in West Bengal, the Calcutta High Court said the land acquisition in Singur was done with a social purpose and it will help generate employment in the area.
The petitioners against the land acquisition said they would move the Supreme Court against the order.
The division bench of Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh said the acquisition of 997.11 acres of land was made following all proper methodology and the process was quite legal.
Altogether 19 public interest litigations were filed against the controversial land acquisition in Singur. The petitioners requested the court to quash the acquisition as there were several discrepancies in the state government notification to obtain the land.
“The high court has dismissed all our writ petitions, rejecting the plea to stop Singur land acquisition. We have still not gone through the entire order. We will move the Supreme Court against this judgement,” lawyer Kalyan Bandhopadhyay told reporters Friday outside the court.
Bandopadhaya represents groups that filed the petitions.
“It was a mere conspiracy of the opposition to hinder the growth of industrialisation in West Bengal. It’s good that the high court has repealed their efforts against industrialisation,” Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader and central committee member Shyamal Chakraborty said.
Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee also expressed satisfaction over the verdict.
Joydeep Mukhopadhyay filed the main petition against the state government’s land acquisition in Singur in February last year.
After hearing the petitioners, the court directed the state government to file an affidavit justifying the legality of the land acquisition.
The state filed the affidavit March 27 last year.
Hearing started in July last year in the division bench of Chief Justice S.S. Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh and continued till September.
Senior lawyers, like former West Bengal chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray, argued for the petitioners.
“The petitioners had claimed that the land acquisition in Singur was done in the interest of Tata Motors, not for the benefit of common people. The high court has quashed their appeal, declaring the process as legal,” West Bengal Advocate General Balai Ray said.
The court verdict is a snub for the Trinamool Congress since party leader Mamata Banerjee had gone on a prolonged hunger-strike against the acquisition.
Singur, some 40 km from Kolkata, was in the eye of the storm since the middle of 2006 over the acquisition of fertile farmlands by the West Bengal government for the Tata Motors’ small car project.
Ratan Tata unveiled his dream car Jan 10 to the world at the Auto Expo 2008 held in New Delhi.
Driving onto the podium in a gleaming white Tata Nano at the ninth Auto Expo, the Tata group chairman silenced sceptics with a Rs.100,000 ($2,500) car powered by a 623 cc, 33 horsepower multipoint fuel injection petrol engine.
“Despite a steep rise in input costs since the product was conceptualised four years back, we will introduce the car at Rs.100,000 because a promise is a promise,” Tata said even as Singur burned replicas of the model to protest the land acquisition.