Kolkata, Oct 3 (IANS) Tata group chairman Ratan Tata Friday announced the company was taking the Nano small car project out of Singur in West Bengal because of continuing political opposition to it.
He said it was unfortunate that he had to make the decision just before Durga Puja, a festive time in the state, but the company had a timeline to meet for the project that had been hailed all over the world.
“You cannot run a plant when bombs are being thrown at the site. You cannot run a plant when workers are being intimidated and threatened,” he told a press conference immediately after meeting Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
“This is a decision we have taken with great deal of sadness,” Tata said in reference to the intensified agitation led by the opposition Trinamool Congress against the allotment of farmland for the state’s showpiece industrial project.
He said the new site for the plant would be announced shortly even as Gujarat joined states like Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Haryana in bidding for the project.
The project – to make a car that will cost all of Rs.100,000 ($2,000) at factory gates – was announced with much fanfare on the day Bhattacharya took oath as the state’s chief minister on May 18, 2006.