By IANS,
Kolkata: Left Front partner, the Forward Bloc, Wednesday questioned Tata Motors’ move to approach the court against the state government’s acquisition of the Singur land and said people of the state will not take the company’s stand positively.
“We don’t know why Tatas are doing this. They left Singur after talking big. Now they have gone to the court. The people of Bengal will not take this positively. The people are confused why Tatas are doing this,” Forward Bloc state secretary Ashok Ghosh told reporters on the sidelines of a party program in Kolkata.
The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011, which came into force Tuesday, cancelled the 997.17-acre land lease given to the company by the erstwhile Left Front government for the small car-manufacturing plant in Hooghly district’s Singur.
The law vested the land in the state government, which evicted the automobile giant from the plant.
Challenging the act, Tata Motors said it was “bad in law” and alleged that it was notified by the government but not publicised. The notification was kept hidden, he contended.
Blaming the Tatas for their present predicament, Ghosh said they should not have insisted on the particular plot of land. “They wanted a piece of land that was close to the airport and well connected by road. They zeroed on this plot of land though it was fertile. And this triggered all the unrest.”
Ghosh also pointed out that during the land acquisition in Singur, Forward Bloc had protested against the forceful taking over of the land.
“During the time of land acquisition, we had protested against the Left Front government initiative to acquire land forcefully. We had staged protests and public rallies against it but our words were not heard,” said Ghosh.
“Later on Bimanbabu (Bose), Buddhadebbabu (Bhattacharjee), Nirupambabu (Sen) came to the conclusion that Singur was a mistake. And that is why we were defeated in the Lok Sabha polls. But despite several efforts we couldn’t win the hearts of the people,” said Ghosh.
Ghosh also welcomed the initiative of the present state government to return the 400 acres of land and use the remaining around 600 acres for industrialisation.
Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas also welcomed the state government’s move to return the land but demanded that other people associated with the land should also be compensated.
The Ashok Ghosh, 87, is also one of the founding members of the Left Front, dodged a question on change in the Left Front leadership. He said the defeat was caused by the decadence among the left activists which could not be checked.
“The degeneration among the Left activists both in government and the party could not be checked in time,” said Ghosh.