By IANS,
New Delhi : Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh Tuesday suggested filing a defamation suit against industrialist Ratan Tata for allegedly tarnishing the image of Trinamool Congress leader Mamta Banerjee.
Singh, who along with Banerjee met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Pratibha Patil, said he had suggested to his party’s West Bengal state unit chief to file a defamation suit against Tata for his remarks on “Good M” (referring to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi) and “Bad M” (Banejee).
“So what if she is not a Samajwadi Party leader, I request you to file a defamation case against Ratan Tata… if you win, you win against Ratan Tata. If you lose, you lose against Ratan Tata,” he told reporters here.
Singh asked Tata to clarify whether he was a politician or an industrialist. “If you cannot reply, ask your spokesperson to inform us,” he said.
Tata’s comments on Banerjee came after he shifted his Tata Motors’ project from Singur in West Bengal to Gujarat. The project to manufacture Nano, the world’s cheapest car, had faced stiff protests from farmers led by Banerjee over land acquisition.
Tata Motors Oct 3 announced it was pulling out its Nano project from the troubled Singur region and blamed Banerjee for the “regretful” decision.
“Modi is good M as he burns entire Gujarat and Mamata is bad M as she fights for the rights of the poor and farmers,” said Singh adding that “people in Singur were more interested in ‘atta’ (flour) than Tata.”
On the meeting with the president and the prime minister, the Rajya Sabha MP said : “I met them on behalf of the two parties and apprised them of how farmers in Singur and the common man suffered due to the failure on part of the state government and the Tatas to honour the agreement brokered by West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi on return of farmers’ land.”
Banerjee and her party were not anti-industry but only wanted that farmers should have been given back their cultivable land, as per the terms of the agreement signed between her and the state government, he said.
Banerjee said they “requested the president and the prime minister to take action under Article 355 against West Bengal over the failure of the state government to honour the agreement which was brokered by the governor”.
“The Left parties had withdrawn support to the UPA (United progressive Alliance) government over the (India-US) nuclear deal while they themselves failed to honour the salient features of the agreement they signed with us over returning excess land to farmers in Singur.”
She also slammed the Tatas who, she said, “have money to publicise against us and there seems to be some politics behind their exit from the state”.