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A TIMELINE
of
SINGUR
(18 May 2006 – 15 June 2008)
A Mazdoor Mukti Publication
PROFILE
“Singur is in Hooghly district, 45 kilometers from Kolkata. The nearest railway stations are Singur, Kamarkundu and Madhusudanpur. The farmland earmarked for the project stands alongside an arc of the Durgapur expressway near the Ratanpur crossing with NH-1. The six mouzas whose land falls under the Tata project site are GopalNagar, BeraBeri, Bajemelia, Khaserbheri, SingherBeri and JoymollarBeri. They stand on the other side of the project site completing the expressway’s arc into a circle. According to a govt. Statistical Handbook on Singur block, 83%of the land is irrigated and the crop density is 220%. The crops produced are mainly paddy and potato but jute and a variety of vegetables are also grown in the fields. There are five modern cold storages and a host of wholesaler’s sheds (arat) in Ratanpur-Singur town.
“According to the People’s Survey carried out by Sanhati Udyog in November, the landholdings in Singur are small with very few owners having more than 2 bighas (0.66 acres). Hence, there are more than 11,000 land holdings. Of a total of 6,000 families that will be affected, about 3500 farming households work on their own fields and can be called poor or subsistence farmers. According to them there are about 1200 unregistered sharecropping Bargadars. But a Status Report on Singur circulated by the CPM Delhi State Secretary, P S Grewal talks of only 237 recorded Bargadars and about 170 unrecorded.
“According to the Sanhati Udyog Report there are a large number of migrant workforces. About 1000 wage-labourers, arrive daily from Bardhaman, Bankura and other parts of the Hooghly district to earn their livelihood from agricultural activities. Around 800 labourers, mostly adivasis from Jharkhand, are seasonal migrants who work the fields for six-eight months and earn just about enough to feed their families back home for the whole year. There are also several permanent migrant families who had come two or three decades ago and settled down in Singur.
“A majority of non-farming households in Singur are employed in agriculture-related occupations. 450-500 cycle-cart drivers transport crops and agricultural inputs to and from the fields, nearly 200 households are engaged in animal husbandry and over 150 households are vegetable vendors in Howrah, Sealdah, Chuchura and the two local markets. The cold storages in Rantanpur employ about 500 labourers.”
BACKGROUND
In May 2006, the West Bengal Government decided to acquire 997 acres (initially 1013 acres were asked for) for the Tata Motors small car factory in Singur of Hooghly district.. Almost 6,000 families, including many agricultural workers and marginal peasants will loose their land and livelihoods. Though the State Government has decided to compensate the land owners, no policy has been taken for the landless agricultural workers, unrecorded bargadars and other rural households who are indirectly dependent for their livelihood on land and agricultural activities. Almost all the land owners had also expressed their unwillingness to give their land from the inception of the project, but these appeals have fallen on deaf ears.
The Tata Project: According to news reports in the month of May 2006, just after the victory of the Left Front in the election of the Legislative Assembly for the seventh time consecutively, a meeting was held between Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, CM of West Bengal and Ratan Tata, the Chairman of Tata Company. In this meeting, it was officially announced that over 1000 acres of the land of Singur block would be acquired since the Tata Motors would build a small car plant. It was also said that the land acquisition would take place shortly as Tata Motors wanted to launch a new One-lakh-Rupee car model by the year 2008. According to Mr. Nilotpal Basu, CPI(M) MP (as stated by him to a delegation that met him on the 7th December), the Tatas had been shown 5 different pieces of land and they chose Singur.
The only official document publicly available on the project, the Gazette notification under sec 4(1) of the Land Acquisition Act 1894 between 19th and 24th July states that the “land as mentioned in the schedule below is likely to be needed to be taken by the Government/ Government undertakings/ Development Authorities, at the public expense for a public purpose viz., employment generation and the socio economic development of the area by setting up a Tata Small Car project”.
2006
18 May: Announcement of Singur Deve-lopment at the Chief Minister – Tata Joint Press Conference in Kolkata. Ratan Tata said today that his aim was still to turn out the small car at a price of Rs 1 lakh, which he had announced some three years ago, and that it will be another two years before the vehicles actually roll out. With chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and surrounded by top group executives, he said Tata Motors had decided to locate the project at Singur in Hooghly. For the first time, Tata revealed that the project, to be spread over 700 acres with another 300 kept aside for ancillary production, and will create 10,000 jobs, direct and indirect. “We have come to believe that Bengal is the most investor-friendly state in the country. Someone had to turn that belief into reality. The investment is a reflection that the Tata group has faith in the investment climate and the government of Bengal,” Tata said. Bhattacharjee, who let Tata do the talking, was modest. Asked what is expected of the government in the next five years, he said: “I will only try to be a performer.
25 May: The struggle of a substantial number of the people of Singur against the land acquisition began from day one when the Tata company representatives and the officials went to see the land. The people refused to let them reach their fields and blocked their way and the Tata team had to be rescued by the police.
26 May: Angry farmers of Singur today demanded that the chief minister assure them of jobs in it. If their demand is not fulfilled, they will continue their agitation and not let the government take their land.
30 May: Mr. Nirupam Sen, state comm-erce and industries minister was greeted with black flags in Singur today by members of Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee, an apolitical organization of farmers and labourers of Singur. The farmers were protesting against the state government allowing Tata Motors to set up an automobile plant on agricultural land.
1 June: About 3,000 villagers today stag-ed a demonstration in front of the office of the Singur block development officer against the government’s move to acquire farmland for the Tata Motors project. The Tatas have chosen the site in Hooghly district, about 45 km from Calcutta, for their small-car project. Local Trinamool MLA Rabindranath Bhatta-charyya was with the protesters throughout the demonstration to express his support. The villagers, under the banner of the Krishijami Banchao Committee (Save Farm-land Committee), brought out a process-ion around noon. Waving sickles, ploughs and brooms, they shouted slogans against chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and industries minister Nirupam Sen. The prote-sters carried placards with slogans like Krishi jami aamader bhitti, tabu Budhhar eki kukirti (Farmland is our livelihood, but look at Buddha’s [Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s] mis-deed) and Jamir dalal Nirupam Sen Singur theke door hato (Land broker Nirupam Sen stay off Singur). Sen had visited Singur on Tuesday (30 May) to explain to the villagers about compensation they would get for land given to the government. He had also tried to convince farmers that it made more sense for them to sell their land instead of using it for cultivation. The protesters, with about 1,000 women at the head, gathered at the BDO’s office and demonstrated for two hours against the government’s move to dispossess farmers of their farmland. They submitted a deputation to BDO Abhijit Mukherjee who said he was yet to receive a government order for acquisition of land and was not in a position to shed light on the issue. The villagers came to talk about land acquisition but I told them that the district magistrate is empowered to deal with the issue.
17July: Work on acquisition of land for Tata Motors’ factory for producing small cars at Singur has begun with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation submit-ing its proposals to Hooghly DM Mr Vinod Kumar. The state government will acquire a little more than 1,000 acres through the WBIDC for transfer to the Tatas. “The proposal reached my office last week. At the moment, the WBIDC wants only 25 per cent of the enterprise’s requirement. We will issue a land acquisition notice in the near future. Farmers whose land is to be taken will have a month’s time formally to lodge their claims and to raise objections, if any,” said Mr Kumar. The proposal will go to the land and land reforms department tomorrow, after which it is to be placed before the minister concerned for the go-ahead to be given. When it comes through, notifications will be issued. The state government has said it will have acquired land within six months of the notices being issued. In another devel-opment, farmers led by the Trinamool Congress’ member of the legislative Assembly from Singur, Mr Robindranath Bhattacharjee, lodged protests with Mr Kumar today, alleging the state government was trying to remove them from land they owned. The farmers also submitted a memorandum to Mr Kumar, saying they would fight “with all their might” any effort to acquire land. Mr Kumar, though, said the memorandum had been submitted on behalf of the Trinamool Congress and not by any farmers’ organisation.
19-24 July: Ignoring the people’s voice the Government issued 13 notices under Section 9 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 to the affected farmers.
24 July: The Durgapur Expressway was blocked as a protest.
8 August: Mr Ratan Tata said here today that he was hopeful about Tata Motors’ proposed plans of setting up a car factory at Singur. Mr Tata was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of Tata Tea’s 43rd annual general meeting. He said that everywhere in the world, land have been acquired to set up construction units and even Special Economic Zones (SEZs). So he hoped that the state government would give the land to the company. He said that Tata Motors had no intention of shifting to another place for the car factory.
Meanwhile, nearly 5,000 locals who had gathered from several villages around Singur, today demonstrated in front of the Gopalnagar gram panchayat office protesting against the state government’s decision to acquire land at Singur for Tata’s small car project.
18 August: Notice issued under Section 9 (1) of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894; dem-onstration held by the peasants of Singur.
22 August: Some 5,000 Singur farmers today gheraoed the block development officer’s office and held up hearings on claims and objections to acquisition of land – for the Tata Motors car factory – by first disallowing officials to proceed to the camp and later boycotting the hearing when the officers did manage to get there under police escort. In Singur, farmers under the banner of Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee demonstrated in front of the BDO’s office since this morning brandishing brooms and sticks. Officials assigned to conduct the hearing were gheraoed. Later, the gherao was withdrawn and officials were permitted to enter the block office. Even as the agitation gained momentum, a top Tata Motors executive said that the company was not looking for an alternative site for its factory. “The small car is expected to roll out from the plant at Singur by 2008,” Tata Motors deputy chief (strategic sourcing department), Mr BB Parekh told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar in the city on ‘‘Prospects of development of the auto component industry in West Bengal’’ organised by Bharat Chamber of Commerce today. He said that the delay in land acquisition would not be a hindrance to meeting the 2008 deadline and expressed satisfaction with the state government for the manner in which it was handling the situation. “Nothing is lacking on the part of the West Bengal government,” he said. A huge police contingent, including Rapid Action Force personnel, deployed in front of the BDO’s office. According to a district admin-istrative official, 1010 farmers, who had protested against land acquisition were asked by the district administration to attend the hearing today. As none of them turned up, the hearing couldn’t be held. Meanwhile the leaders of SKJRC has threatened to fight against any attempts of displacing farmers from their land till last drop of blood.
28 August: Calcutta High Court today heard a writ petition challenging the proposed land acquisition at Singur for a car-manu-facturing unit there. Mr Justice Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyaya directed the State to file an affidavit. The matter will be heard after the Puja vacation. The state land and land reforms minister, Mr Abdur Rezzak Mollah, today said land acquisition in Singur would be completed before the Pujas.
29-31 August: Notice issued under Sect-ion 6 of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. When the authorities went to deliver final notices at BeraBeri between 29th and 31st August, the women barricaded the way and prevented the officials from pasting notices on their walls.
By September 27, the land department will hand over to the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation all the 1,013 acres Tata Motors needs at Singur in Hooghly district to put up its small-car plant. Any day after that, the corporation can transfer the land to the Tatas. Abdur Rezzak Mollah’s land and land reforms department received the proposal from Tata Motors on July 21 and the process of acquisition was flagged off in two days. Mollah said the pace of acquisition was an “all-India record”. He had earlier promised the process would be completed within three to six months. If the process is completed by September 27, it would have taken just two months. Acquisition is being rushed through in the face of protests organised by Opposition Trinamool Congress. By the end of the day today, the Hooghly district administration had received around 450 consent forms from farmers voluntarily handing over land measuring 303 acres. Officials said the date for receiving consent forms was extended on August 28 following assurances from the local Krishak Sabha, the CPM farmers’ organisation, that it would persuade the owners to hand over land willingly. “All consent counters at Singur will be kept open past August 31 right up to the date of announcing compensation,” land reforms commissioner Sukumar Das said. The land department today issued notices declaring that the government would acquire six portions totalling 507.8 acres “in public interest”. Farmers owning parts of these 507.8 acres have been given 10 days to submit their consent to the acquisition.
September: The latest notification to the Environment Impact Assessment Act, in September, 2006, vests the states with more power and the people with lesser scope to participate in the decision-making process. The ministry of rural development opened the draft of the new National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy briefly for public scrutiny in October. The formulation and re-formulation of these legislations and policies are rather exclusionary and undemocratic. In the issue of People’s Democracy dated 11 September, 2005, Prakash Karat justified the amendment to the West Bengal Land Ceiling Act by saying that it was meant to acquire 41,000 acres lying locked in closed industrial complexes around Kolkata.
1 September: More than 100 villagers from Santoshimatola in Singur prevent officials from entering their villages to serve notice to acquire land. Because of protest demonstration keeping women in the forefront in Bajemelia district authorities flee—work of issuing notices is abandoned.
The state land and land reforms minister, Mr Abdur Razzak Molla today admitted: “Although a third of the land holders have given consent we have to plug all loopholes because the disgruntled lot might move court. The situation is complex at Singur.”
4 September: An international Fact Find-ing Mission (FFM) was held in Singur to look into the looming eviction of farming comm-unities as a result of the construction of Tata Corporation of a facility in the area. As a result of this FFM, a report on the situation of the community was drafted. Moreover, an online petition letter addressed to the government of West Bengal and to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was posted in the PCFS website. The letter urges these offices to look into the planned eviction of the farming communities in Singur, West Bengal.
20 September: The West Bengal Gov-ernment declared that the lands at Singur, for which notification was issued earlier under Land Acquisition Act of 1894, have been vest absolutely in the Government, free from all encumbrances.
21 September: The award was declared. Through the month of September, the issue got raised at multiple platforms outside Singur, in Kolkata too. There was a clear message from the various meetings that the Government must not forcibly evict people and must review its stand on Singur. The Government however, moved according to plan and on paper acquired the land on the 20th September 2006.
25 September: Land acquired. The events (The day the Govt decided to hand out compensations) showed that the Government would go to any extent to evict the people and hand over the land to the company officials, more than four hundred people including several women and children were brutally assaulted and about 78 activists were arrested which included 27 women, MP Mamata Bannerji and MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya. At around 1:40 am in the night the RAF and the police attack a few thousand men-women-children who had been protesting peacefully all day. Few hundred persons are injured. The government had announced publicly that cheques for compensation would be issued to the landowners of Singur whose lands have been vested in the government. The assembled villagers at BDO Singur were upset that their voice had not been given a platform and that the Government was unilaterally working on this project. About 5000 people including about 2000 women workers had peacefully demons-trated at the Block Development Office at Singur against the distribution of cheques to the peasants under the banner of “Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee”. The protest was an all night one. The dissenting farmers wanted the administration to carry out mutation for their land titles too. However, they were told that only if they gave their consent letters would it be carried out.
The struggle of the people nevertheless continued in a democratic and peaceful fashion the next few months. Marches, rallies, public hearings got organized in Singur and Kolkata. They were joined by several organisations and eminent people like Professors from Jadavpur University, Human Rights and other social action groups, trade unions and all political parties other than those of the left front from all over W. Bengal. Former Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and former Prime Minister VP Singh all urged the Government, met the Governor and wrote to the PM and President and Central Government to not evict the people and give the TATA’s alternative land.
Trinamool supremo Miss Mamata Banerjee announced a 24-hour “general strike”, (read Bangla bandh) on 9 October in protest against land acquisition at Singur, tonight.
27 September: As a sign of civil dis-obedience, the Socialist Unity Centre of India and CPI (ML) Liberation called for a 12 hour bandh (protest or general strike) in Singur on 27 September. Moreover, a meeting of the NGO’s/ CSO’s was held on the same date protesting against the attack of the police on the peasants of Singur, particularly on the peasant women.
Sonia Gandhi’s Congress today sought to project itself as a responsible Opposition party in Bengal as it rolled out the welcome mat for Ratan Tata and his proposed car project in Singur. While rallying behind Mamata Banerjee in her bid to get Tata to relocate the project, Congress leaders stressed that they didn’t want the protest to come in the way of Tata’s dream — to roll out a Rs 1-lakh car from Bengal — or Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s vision of an industrialised state. “Let’s make it clear, we have nothing against Buddhadeb Bhatta-charjee’s Indus-trialisation programme, or the Tatas’ small-car project,” Union information and broad-casting minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi said. “Ratan Tata is an ideal industrialist. We would like to have him here,” he added. After five years, senior Congress leaders shared dais with Mamata today and announced a series of protests against the police action in Singur to dislodge Trinamool Congress supporters who had laid siege to the block office in protest against land acquisition. Congress leaders such as Somen Mitra, Subrata Mukherjee and Sudip Bandopadhyay urged the government to structure an all-party initiative and “take us (the Opposition) into confidence”.
28 September: Rajkumar Bhool who was injured (on 25 September) by the police atrocities at the BDO office died. He is declared as the first martyr of the Singur Agricultural Land Protection Committee. By the initiative of Trinamool Congress there is blockage of all roads and railway lines in the state from 11am to 12noon.
1 October: On the day of Bijoy Doshumi night vigil is observed in the affected moujas of Singur. All the villagers in all the villages of Singur area switched off the lights in their houses in the evening as a symbol of protest. The whole area was engulfed by darkness.
Ex-chief justices of the Supreme Court judges J. S. Verma and Rajendra Babu and retired judge M. N. Rao write letters to Ratan Tata to abandon Singur.
3 October: The people protested by refusing to cook in thousands of village houses in Singur. This is to protest against the police atrocities and as a part of non-violent peaceful movement.
4 October: An all party meeting by the initiative of the government was held, but was not attended by the major opposition party — Trinamool Congress boycotted. Gov-ernment has again declared that the physical possession of the land would be taken very soon and the same would be handed over to Tata before the end of this month.
9 October: A 24-hour statewide bandh or general strike has been observed by various political parties to protest the eviction of the peasants. The Committee to Assist the Struggle of Singur Peasants Against Eviction has also supported the general strike. 6211 Bandh supporters arrested.
11 October: Claiming that Tata Motors has been given the “best package” for its small car project in the state, the West Bengal government today said that about 1,000 acre required for it was already in its possession. “The land (for the project) is already in the possession of the state government,” Chief Minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, told reporters at the state secretariat here. To compete with states like Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh where exemption on excise duty and income tax was available as per central government policy, “we have given the best package to the Tatas,” he said.
Bhattacharjee said the state government would not sell the land to the Tatas but lease it out to the auto major. He said that the state government has entered into a package deal with the Tatas.
Later, Industry minister, Nirupam Sen, explained that land would be given to the Tatas on lease at a concessional rate. “The period of lease and rental is being worked out.” “The lease may be for 99 years,” he said. Stating that the state government has incurred a cost of Rs 148 crore for land acquisition for the Tata project at Singur in Hooghly district, Sen said that the entire land would be handed over to the company by December.
Tata Motors would spend Rs 1,000 crore for setting up the Rs one lakh people’s car project at Singur, 35 km from Kolkata.
The company has announced that it would launch the car by 2008. It had given an end of the year deadline to the state government for the land acquisition.
12 October: A deputation of the Sanhati Udyog is sent to the Hoogly District Mag-istrate; APDR publishes its fact-finding report on police atrocities at the BDO office and the murder of Rajkumar Bhool.
15 October: Because of police atrocities in Singur on 25 September, Shame Day is observed.
16 October: Unidentified goons, allegedly backed by the CPI(M), damaged a water pumping station at Madhyapara in Singur last night to prevent irrigation of potato farms in the area. It seems to be a pressure tactic to force agitating farmers of Singur to give up their land for the proposed small car factory. Farmers said that goons vandalised the water pumping station at the “behest of the CPI(M)” to stop them from cultivating their land. The state government had issued a prohibitory order restricting farmers from using land for agricultural purposes ahead of the comm.-encement of the land acquisition process in Singur. But villagers who opposed land acquisition flouted the order and continued with farming. The pumping station, set up 30 years ago by the state government to facilitate multi-crop farming in Beraberi and Bajemelia moujas has been the only source of water for the farmers. Farmers said that the goons went on the rampage in the pumping station, snapped its power connection and damaged parts of the water pipelines. The Singur police began a probe but nobody could be arrested till late tonight. “An incident took place near the pumping station last night, but no complaint has been lodged with us. We are probing the case,” said Mr Priyobrata Baxi, officer-in-charge, Singur police station. The incident occurred 20 days ahead of commencement of potato farming. The pumping station used to provide water for farming potato, paddy and jute in Bajemelia and Beraberi moujas which have been ear-marked for the small car project.
The Congress today made it clear that the party’s joining hands with Miss Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress will only be “based on issues” in West Bengal, like their common “issue-based agitation” to protest the Left Front government’s alleged “anti-farmers policy” in Singur, and not part of “any blind poll alliance”.
17 October: 10 universities of the state and 130 faculty members of IIT request the governor to intervene to stop the forceful eviction of peasants in Singur.
18 October: More than a 1000 women from Singur protest in front of the Tata Center at Kolkata.
21 October: As a protest, no lights were lit in the villages of Singur on the night of Diwali.
23 October: A water-pumping station in Singur’s Kolepara village was vandalised last night by unidentified goons allegedly backed by Communist Party of India-Marxist leaders wanting to stop supply to 65 acres of farmland owned by people unwilling to cede their plots for a Tata Motors factory to come up. The station, built by the State Minor Irrigation Corporation in 1978 for multi-crop farming, is the sole source of water for the farmers of Kolepara, Gopalnagar, Sanapara and villages close to Gopalnagar. A week earlier, a pumping station in Singur’s Madhyapara was left badly damaged after a raid by ruffians. The culprits are yet to be detained though an assistant engineer of the state water resources, investigation and dev-elopment department lodged a complaint with Hooghly police last week. The complaint was urged by Mr Nandagopal Bhattacharjee, the departmental minister. Mr Ranjit Mullick, chief operator of the Kolepara facility, said: “More than 65 acres in Gopalnagar, Kolepara, Sanapara receive water from the pumping station vandalised last night. It has three rooms and the criminals broke into the one with a transformer in it. They snapped the power link and stole transmission cables worth a few lakh of rupees. The theft came to my notice around 8 am today when I found the door open.”
26 October: Hailing Tata Steel’s takeover of Corus as an example of the Tatas’ reputation as a world-class manufacturer, the CPM is asking people of West Bengal to welcome the Tata Motors’ small-car project in Singur. While the Tata Group has many interests in West Bengal, notes the editorial in Ganashakti, the CPM mouthpiece, ‘‘the group’s decision to choose Singur for its small-car project will be a boon for the manufacturing industry, and attract more investments to the state’’.
27 October: Social activist Ms Medha Patkar today warned the state government of a law and order breakdown in Singur if force was exerted to acquire farm land while the well-known litterateur and social activist, Mrs Mahasweta Devi, said CPI(M) workers have no right to call themselves Marxists because they have been “systematically hoodwinking people.” They were addressing a rally organised by Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee at Bajemelia hospital ground this afternoon.
Public Hearings organized, which was chaired by Medha Patkar and had Mahashweta Devi, Justice Malay Sengupta and Dipankar Sengupta as members, were creative and democratic ways of giving a platform to the voices challenging the acquisition.
Regarding the consent of the people, all the nine meetings held were with party representatives and panchayat members but not with any gram sabha or with the project affected. It is required under the 74th Amendment of the Constitution and must happen, even at this late stage. It is clear that no project details were provided to the gram panchayat nor was its consent sought, as reported to a panel for public hearing on October 27, 2006, by Dhud Kumar Dhara, a member of the gram panchayat.
30 October: In a balancing act in the midst of controversy over proposed acqu-isition of land for the Tatas’ car project, former chief minister Jyoti Basu on Monday sounded a note of caution for acquiring multi-crop land by the Left Front government in West Bengal for setting up industries.
31 October: Country’s leading car manu-facturer Tata Motors today said it would roll out its Rs 1 lakh car in the second half of 2008, from its proposed plant at Singur in West Bengal. However, the company would start manufacturing the cars at its proposed plant “well before that”, Tata Motors Man-aging Director Ravi Kant today said, without specifying any timeframe. Speaking to reporters after announcing the company’s second quarter results of the current fiscal, Kant said that the company has sought for 970 acres of land, of which Tata Motors would use more than 60 per cent and the rest by ancillary companies.
3 November: Citizens’Convention by the Citizen’s Mancha in Kolkata. Ten complaints are filed against the government. A Public meeting was organized by SUCI in Singur.
5 November: Trinamool Congress sup-remo Mamata Banerjee on Sunday asked the Tatas to shift their proposed small car project from farmland in West Bengal’s Singur and gave a 12-day ultimatum to the state government to announce that industries would not be set up on agricultural land. However, the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee-government expressed determin-ation to go ahead with the project.
7 November: West Bengal government started deploying huge contingents of armed police and the Rapid Action Force and setting up camps at several places in the area. Plainclothes police informers have been openly moving around in the villages gathering information about resistance plans. Armed policemen have been posted in the village squares and the markets to keep watch on the villagers’ movements.
The process of land acquisition in South 24-Parganas has been kicked off with the urban development department sending a proposal to the district administration for construction of district headquarters at Baruipur. The initial proposal for acquisition of 498 acres of land was sent a week ago. This is the first proposal for land acquisition to be submitted in the district where huge acquisitions are on the anvil for shifting the district headquarters to Baruipur from Alipore and for various projects of the Salim group including two townships. According to the agreement between the state govern-ment and the Salim group, the latter will pay the cost of land acquisition in Baruipur to KMDA for the construction of the district headquarters. The land earmarked for district headquarters is spread over five mouzas including Jagadishpur.
17 November: Traffic virtually came to a stand still on Central Avenue in the afternoon as thousands of lathi-wielding Trinamool Congress activists marched along the road, carrying party flags, placards and shouting slogans. People returning home from offices had a harrowing time as the party workers protested against the acquisition of cultivable land by the state government in Singur for industrial purposes. The dandi march, which was scheduled to start at 1:30 p.m., ultimately commenced around 3:30 p.m. from near the Mahatma Gandhi statue on Mayo Road.
19 November: Farmers opposing land acquisition in Singur today took out a rally against deployment of policemen in five camps, accusing them of “terrorising” villagers under the “influence of CPI(M) leaders” to stop them from sowing potatoes. Anticipating trouble from agitating farmers, the district authorities have thrown a strong security cover in Singur by deploying more than 800 policemen at five “strategic points” while they fence 997 acres. Farmers allege lack of consent on their part. More than 7,000 farmers including 800 women took out a procession from Bajemelia hospital grounds under the banner of Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) this evening demanding “immediate withdrawal” of police from Bajemelia, Chagalveri, Khaserveri and Joymollah villages. They also organised sit-ins before the police pickets. The procession ended at Khaserveri where SCJRC’s convener Mr Becharam Manna addressed the gathering. Supporters of political outfits like CPI(ML), SUCI and CPI(ML) New Democracy and members of Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) also attended.
25 November: Teachers of various uni-versities and premier academic institutes staged a protest in Kolkata against the acquisition of multi-crop agricultural land for industrialisation. A large number of teachers, under the banner of Teachers and Scientists against Maldevelopment, also joined in the sit-in demonstration. Tarun Kanti Naskar and Abhee Dutta Majumdar, joint conveners of the forum, have criticised the government’s “anti-peasant role” and pledged to extend moral support to the “struggling farmers”.
26 November: A section of villagers in Singur has started preparing to resist the Hooghly district administration’s physical occupation of acquired land today. In some cases, the administration had issued cheques to owners whose claims were doubtful, Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee said. In 50 cases, objections had been filed. Mamata would lead an agitation in Singur on Sunday to sow potatoes. West Bengal Industrial Devel-opment Corporation officials have collected consent letters from 30 landowners during the day after visiting Gopalnagar village. The district authorities have made a strong police bandobast. Around 6,000 additional policemen would be deployed. They are also controlling the movement of vehicles on the Durgapur Expressway in view of Mamata’s threat to sow potato seeds on the plots.
30 November: State violence began to be orchestrated once again from 30th November, when section 144 was clamped on the area. Trinamool activists torched buses, blocked roads and railways and disrupted traffic movement while protesting against the alleged assault on their party leader Ms Mamata Banerjee who had been barred by police from proceeding to Singur today. Police arrested whoever boarded down from the train or moving towards Singur. The govern-ment has prohibited all assemblies in the Singur area.
1 December: The Trinamool sponsored 12-hour Bangla bandh today witnessed sporadic violence, in which one person was killed and some passengers were injured when bandh supporters threw stones at vehicles, including the Kolkata-Dhaka bus on NH 34. Meanwhile, the state government began fencing off the land acquired for setting up the Tata small car factory at Singur. While Miss Mamata Banerjee descry-ibed yesterday’s ransacking of the Assembly as “most unfortunate” the Left Front today demanded “exemplary punishment” for the Trinamool legislators involved in the incident. The bandh also ensured that the US ambassador, Mr David Mulford, took an early flight out of the city, cancelling his engage-ments. Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said in Midnapore that the incidents over Singur would not send any wrong signals to investors. Meanwhile, fencing work began at Singur amid protests. Director of Industries Mr MV Rao said it would be completed in three days. Officials in the industry department said the Tatas are likely to take possession of land in five days’ time. District magistrate Mr Vinod Kumar said police posts had been set up at Joymolla village within the project site.
2 December: A memorandum seeking to stop this “persecution” would be given to the governor and if it continues a three-day long bandh would be called as the last resort, Mr Subrata Mukherjee, senior Congress leader and a spokesman of the Krishi Jami Bachao Committee said in a Press conference today.
People of Khaserbheri, Bera Beri and Gopalnagar gathered to resist the fencing off of the proposed project land. Severe police force was used against them, several people were injured and more than 60 people were arrested. Several women told us that the police not only beat up people at the project site, but chased them into their villages and dragged them out of their houses and beat them. Verbal sexual abuse was used against the women, and at least one young woman, Deepali Moitra said that she was dragged by her hair from under a bed in Kasherberi where she was hiding. Medha Patkar who went in solidarity was not allowed to enter the affected villages by the officials and her citizen rights of movement in the area was curtailed.
According to eye-witnesses in the various villages of Khaserbheri, Bera Beri, Do Bandi, including the fact finding reports on the violence of the 2nd brought out by Manavadhikar Surakhsa Manch (MASUM) and that of Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samiti, the state government had deployed more than 5000 police contingent and Rapid Action Force (RAF). The government had already promulgated the prohibitory order u/s 144 of Cr.P.C on the 30th November itself in Singur. When the government officials started putting the fence on 2nd November 2006 at about 10 AM, the local villagers resisted. The people were already there since 6 AM and when the officials who under police protection were fencing the area came face to face with them they resisted the take over as it was their last effort to save the land. It was in this exchange that violence broke out and police force and RAF resorted to widespread lathi-charge and firing tear-gas shells and rubber bullets. The villagers told us that the police entered the adjoining villages and mercilessly beat and physically assaulted the villagers indiscriminately showing no respect to the women, old people and children. A number of people got severe injuries due to police brutality. The police entered the houses and ventured into the rooftop and beat up unarmed peaceful people with batons causing bloodsheds. The police also tore clothes of women and verbally hurled sexual abuses at them.
According to the fact finding report of the MASUM report dated 2.12.2006 the police arrested more than 60 people comprising of 18 women and children. Among them, Jhuma Patra, daughter of Mr. Ashok Patra of village Khaserbheri, 12 years old and a student of class-V in Naraharipara Primary School and Soma Dhara daughter of Sanyasi Dhara of same village, a minor were also arrested.
The Chandan Nagar Police Station filed case nos 150 & 151 dated 2.12.2006. In both the cases the complainant was Officer-in-Charge of Singur Police Station, Mr. Priya Brata Baxi. In case no. 150, according to police version, 38 persons were arrested and among them 4 were admitted to government hospital. The police initiated the case under sections 147/148/149/186/188/447/332/333/-353/325/307 of Indian Penal Code (IPC) & 9(b) (2) of Indian Explosive Act (I.E. Act) with 9 W.B.M.P.O. Act. In the Case No. 151, ten people were injured and one police personnel also received injury. This case was registered under sections 147/148/149/188/323/353/-307 of IPC and 9(b) (2) of I.E. Act
4 December: The WB government claim-ed that 920 acres of land has been voluntarily handed over by the landowners.
Social activist Medha Patkar and Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh were on Monday detained along with other top BJP leaders from West Bengal on their way to Singur, where fencing work at the Tata Motors small car project site continued amid strong police presence. Singh, who arrived in Kolkata on Monday, was stopped by police at Maitipara on Durgapur Expressway, 25 km away from Singur and arrested along with state party president Sukumar Banerjee and secretary Rahul Sinha under section 151 Cr PC. They were freed on bail immediately, Hooghly police superintendent Supratim Sarkar said. Patkar, who had set forth from the city by local train with two others, had disembarked at Sheoraphuli station on Howrah-Bandel section and had reached Purushottampur, 10 km away from Singur, by autorickshaw when policemen stopped her, threw a cordon and took her forcibly to Dankuni. She is being kept at the CIL guest house at Dankuni. This is the third time that Patkar has been prevented by the police from reaching Singur in less than a week.
4 December: The Singur agitation intens-ified today with Miss Mamata Banerjee going on an indefinite hunger-strike and declaring her moral support to tomorrow’s SUCI-sponsored bandh. Miss Banerjee began the hunger-strike at Esplanade in central Kolkata after the state government had rejected her demand for stopping fencing work at Singur and withdrawal of police forces from the area. Fifteen farmers, including five elderly women, began a fast-unto-death at Singur today in protest against police excesses and land acquisition. Miss Banerjee declared that her party would block roads all over the state for two hours from 12 noon on 6 December and march to Singur on 7 December, “come what may”. “You get lost”, was her final message to Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The Trina-mool supremo apologised for the inconven-ience caused by bandhs. “We are not in favour of bandhs. But there is no alternative’’. Left Front chairman Mr Biman Bose said the government would oppose tomorrow’s strike. BJP chief Mr Rajnath Singh was detained on his way to Singur and released at Dankuni, 25 km from the project site. He later shared the dais with Miss Banerjee.
Activist Ms Medha Patkar was turned back on her way to Singur for the second time in four days. A habeas corpus application moved in Calcutta High Court today complained that Ms Patkar had been illegally detained.
The chief minister told the Assembly that fencing work was on and would end soon. The Tatas would be handed over land this month, he said. Asked about an upward revision of the compensation package for farmers, Mr Bhattacharjee sounded positive. On his all-party talks offer, he said only the Congress had responded positively to it. The chief minister, however, clarified there was no scope for any further discussion on the “core issue”.
The Assembly Speaker today accepted a privilege motion against 21 Trinamool MLAs and declared that salary and other facilities of 29 Trinamool MLAs would be suspended till the PWD submitted a report on the total loss of public property. The Opposition walked out in protest against the decision. The Speaker has decided to refer a motion against Miss Banerjee for the Assembly ransacking to the privilege committee of Parliament. The Singur issue rocked Parliament also.
5 December: In spite of prohibitory ord-ers people continued to protest in the affected villages. In both BeraBeri and Khaserbheri people were sitting on indefinite fasts. In spite of the terror unleashed in the area, people have started peaceably defying Section 144.
6 December: The police stopped thou-sands of protesters today from storming the site of a proposed Tata factory in West Bengal.
7 December: Rajya Sabha mp Nilotpal Basu told a delegation that the Tatas had been shown five different plots for the car project. He also said that the company did not want any other plot than the Singur one.
8 December: People spontaneously shut down shops and took out a procession of about 500 people when the police forcibly took away Rabindra Bhattacharya, the local MLA and 4 others from the Bajemelliya Santoshimatala hunger strike camp.
10 December: The Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee had a press conference in Beraberia Purba para and presented signed letters from farmers where the farmers declared that “We Have Not And Will Not Give Our Land To Tata Motors”.
Shanti Ram Ghosh of Beraberi Mandirtala, a cheque recipient announced in the press conference that he was ready to return his cheque and wants his land back. The members of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) today countered the state government’s claim saying that the state government was yet to receive consent from owners of nearly 344.91 acres of land. The state government had claimed that it had received letters of consent from owners of 935 acres of land – earmarked for the Tatas’ small car factory in Singur. Meanwhile, 14 women have launched a fast-unto-death near Beraberi Purbapara in Singur today in protest against alleged “police excesses” on last Saturday and the state government’s “false claims”. A two-year old, Koel Das, was seen accompanying her mother on stage. The SKJRC has prepared a list of farmers unwilling to let go of their land. The list was produced before mediapersons today and would soon be submitted to the district magistrate. Mr Shankar Jana, joint convener of the SKJRC as well as member of the Suci’s Hooghly district committee said: “Owners of 344.91 acres of land have declined to give up their land and only Rs 67 crore has been disbursed so far by way of compensation to farmers. The total compensation package stands at Rs 140 crore.” The farmers claimed that the government was yet to get letters of consent from owners of 55.26 acres land in Beraberi mouja and that owners of 33.47 acres land in Khaserveri, 16.68 acres land in Joymollah, 16.98 acres land in Beraberi Bazar and Malapara, 3.37 acres land in Ujjwal Sangha area, 57.10 acres land in Kolaypara and Singherveri, 63.69 acres land in Purbapara, 97.43 acres land in Gopalnagar and 0.97 acres land in Duluigacha did not agree to give up land till today.
CPI(M) in Peoples’ Democracy stated, “over 950 acres has the voluntary consent of the owners who have already collected their compensation.”
11 December: West Bengal Left Front chairman and CPI(M) politburo member Biman Bose on Monday alleged that there were high-profile outsiders in the garb of social activists who were being funded by overseas agencies to disrupt economic development in parts of India. He exhorted CPI(M)’s SFI–students arm to “expose such persons”.
18 December: At about 6 a.m. the body of a young activist of the Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Samity, Tapasi Malik was found burning in the fenced area. Some hair and other articles were found near her body. It seemed a clear case of murder. Tapasi had on the previous day worked hard to mobilize the children and had gone home, had dinner and then slept. According to the family she had probably gone to the fields in the morning for toilet purposes when she may have been attacked. An FIR no 156/ 18 December, 2006 was lodged under sections 302 and 201 of the IPC. The girl was reportedly raped and murdered by miscreants who were present within the guarded area. The victim had entered into the fencing for nature’s call. She was about to be buried and fire was set on her body to destroy the evidence of crime. The villagers intervened in such situation as fire and bad smell attracted them. The micreants involved in the matter fled from the spot. Therafter, Superintendent of Police of Hooghly swung into action to cover up the crime. Mr. Supratim Sarkar, SP of Hooghly rushed to the place of occurrence with a huge contingent of police force and called father of the victim, Manoranjan Malik and forced him to sign on a paper. The body of the girl was brought to Serampore Walsh Hospital for post mortem examination where the attending doctors refused to conduct post mortem, then the body was referred to Calcutta Medical College and Hospital. According to a fact finding team of the Kolkata women’s groups that went immediately to the area the murder with a possibility of rape could have been the act of the 195 security guards deployed by the WBIDC and police deployed to guard the acquired area. It was after a lot of protest by the Krishi Jami Rakhsha Samiti and others in Kolkata that the investigation has been handed over to the CBI.
28 December: After 25 days of persist-ently refusing to end fasting, Trinamool Congress chief Miss Mamata Banerjee called off the hunger strike today. The MP, who had complained of a blurring vision earlier in the day, told reporters that letters from President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and former Prime Minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee had persuaded her to take the decision.
In Japaiguri, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said the state government had “specific” information that the rivals of the Tatas were encouraging trouble over the car factory project in Singur, Hooghly. The comment comes a day after Ratan Tata accused “some…competitors” of fuelling the fire, adding a new dimension of corporate intrigue to the existing political issue. In an interview to a private television channel, Tata had expressed the determination to see through the project that will turn out cars costing Rs 1 lakh at the site some 40 km from Calcutta.
28 December: an elderly couple, who had parted with their land for the proposed Tata Motors small car factory at Singur, were found dead in their house in mysterious circumstances at Doluigacha near Ghoshpara in Singur this morning. Police said some locals spotted the inert bodies of Tinkari Dey (55) and his wife Maya (50) on the floor of their bedroom around 11.30 a.m. today. While both bodies bore marks of injury, an electrical cord was found cutting into each neck, Mr Arun Gupta, IG (Western range) said. He said preliminary investigation suggested that it was not a case of suicide but added that police were yet to establish the motive. He said that the “murders” had been committed clearly “not for gain” as no valuables or household goods had been found missing from the victims’ residence. Police did not find any suicide note. Mr Gupta said the two bodies had been sent for autopsy. “The cause of death will be known only after we get the reports. We have certain leads and are working on them. Police have questioned a few locals but no arrests have been made,” the IG said. According to reports, Tinkari and Maya used to live alone and their three sons are settled in Delhi. They owned nearly 20 cottahs of land at Singerbheri — a part of the farmland earmarked for the Tatas’ small car factory project area. They had parted with their land and had collected a cheque for Rs 4.22 lakh from the Singur BDO office.
31 December: The West Bengal Govern-ment earlier in its “STATUS REPORT ON SINGUR, As on December 31st , 2006″ had spread the blatant lie of 96%. Now they have rolled back the whole story (STATUS REPORT ON SINGUR) from their website without any explanation.
A group led by Dr. Sumit Sarkar visited Singur.
2007
1 January: Mamata Banerjee’s decision to end her `indefinite’ fast on the Singur issue after 25 days of high-wire theatrics brought considerable relief to West Bengal and beyond. The relatively tame end to her hunger strike seems to have disappointed the ragbag of political friends — ranging from Naxalites through communal elements to free-floating and freelancing NGOs and individuals — who have rallied to her Singur cause to target the organised Left in a year it has scored major electoral victories.
3 January: Trinamool Congress leader-ship and members of Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC), today pointed out discrepancies in the status report that was published by the state government on 22 December and 2 January and have given a 72- hour ultimatum to the state government to publish the list of farmers who have given their consent for land acquisition. Listing the discrepancies, Mr Partha Chattopadhyay, leader of the Opposition, said that the chief minister in his letter to Miss Mamata Banerjee on 20 December stated that the total amount of compensation to be paid is Rs 131.49 crore. The status report which was published on that day also quoted the same figure. But, yesterday, Mr Sabyasachi Sen, state industry and commerce secretary said, the total compensation payable for the acquired land in Singur is Rs 119 crore. Mr Chatterjee said that the government is making such “dubious” statements in order to baffle the people. A senior member of SKJRC said that even the industry and commerce minister in an interview to a private channel, said, the total compensation package is about Rs 131 crore. He said in earlier status report stated so far Rs 85 crore was spent as compensation but yesterday Mr Sen said that Rs 83 crore was disbursed so far. Earlier, in his second letter, the chief minister stated that of the 997 acres of land needed for the project, the state government had already acquired 954 acre of land with the consent of the farmers. Yesterday, the state government announced that owners of 658 acres of land in Singur of total 997 acres acquired for Tata Motors small car project had accepted compensation, till 31 December 2006. Mr Chattopadhyay said earlier the state government in their status report stated pre-award consent status – rayati consent- 584 acre, factory consent 38 acre and vested land 34 acre which amounts to 620 acre. The same status report stated 332 acre was awaiting for post award consent.
7 January: Farmers of Singur alleged that the government has stopped releasing water from 30 deep and the mini tube-wells which fall inside the fenced-off area. As a result, agriculture in almost 743 acres of land in Bajemelia, Singherveri, Khaserveri, Beraberi and Gopalnagar, has been badly hit owing to the non-availability of irrigation water. There are three deep tube-wells and 27 mini tube-wells in the area, which supply irrigation water to almost 1600 acres of agricultural land.
15 January: An official of Tata Motors was manhandled and his car damaged by a mob at Singur in Hooghly today. A four-member team, including officials of the Com-munity Development Programme of Tata Motors, West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and a private firm had gone to the Gopalnagar panchayat office around 12 noon to hand over railway tickets to villagers. Tata Motors is supposed to take a team of 24 panchayat members from three panchayats to Jamshedpur to show them the community development programme of the Tatas. The three panchayats are Gopalnagar, Beraberi and Kamarkundu-Gopalnagar-Doluigacha (KGD). As the officials were returning, they were intercepted by nearly 70 villagers at Sahanapara crossing off Durgapur Express-way. The villagers gheraoed them. Five police personnel escorting the officials tried to pacify the mob. The villagers identified the community development officer of the company, Mr SB Suryakanta. They manhan-dled him and damaged his gypsy van. Additional police forces reached the spot and rescued the officials. Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee convener Mr Becharam Manna, took full responsibility of the incident. The Singur OC said no complaint had been lodged.
The Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee today complained that the much awaited list of consent award put out on the govern-ment’s website contains names of 100 farmers whose land is outside the Tata small car project area. These farmers live in Bajemelia, Beraberi, Singerbheri and Gopalnagar moujas.
16 January: Villagers of Sahanapara in Singur uprooted nearly 30 pillars of the fence and forced their way into the area earmarked for the proposed small car project of Tata Motor this afternoon at the site where the manhandling incident took place yesterday. They were chased away by a police contingent led by ASP (HQ) Mr Asit Pal. A picket has been posted. The incident occurred around 2 p.m. when Trinamool leaders were addressing a rally at Kapasaria crossing off Durgapur Expressway near Singur. Trinamool leaders including Mr Sanjoy Baxi, Mr Paresh Pal and Mr Dilip Yadav entered Sahanapara village on two motorcycles and mobilised more than 100 farmers to organise the raid. Policemen, posted at Sahanapara crossing off the Durgapur Expressway, couldn’t identify them. Later, more than 100 farmers gathered and entered inside the fencing.‘
At the rally, Trinamool threatened to call a 72-hour strike in the state if supremo Miss Mamata Banerjee is not allowed to visit Singur.
19 January: Tension gripped Singur this afternoon when GRP found the body of Astu Malik (48), uncle of slain Krishi Jami Raksha Committee leader Tapasi Malik. His body was found lying on railway tracks near Chandan-pur in Burdwan-Howrah chord section.
21 January: Initial phases of construction work for the Tata Motors’ ambitious Rs 1,000 crore small car project began with a bhoomi puja at Singur in Hoogly district, the West Bengal government said today. The Tata communication came a day after the West Bengal government extended prohibitory orders banning the assembly of four or more people in Singur till Jan 28 midnight following reports that more protests could be organised over the takeover of fertile farmland for the small car project. Even as Singur remained tense with a Tata official heckled by protestors recently, a statement from the company said that it had begun construction work on Sunday, but without detailing the exact nature of the first step. Reports from Singur said that with over 500 policemen present, a ‘ bhumi puja’, a Hindu ritual prior to starting any project, was performed at the site, but not over the plot whose owners claim they have not given up their land yet. “The Tata Motors plant operation is expected to create employment in excess of 10,000 direct and indirect jobs,” the release said. The civil construction for the plant is being initiated by Tata Motors, it said. Singur, about 40 km from here in Hooghly district, has been chosen by Tata for its small car project over 997 acres of land. This has triggered a violent face-off between the government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like Trinamool Congress.
22 January: A 1000-member security squad was engaged last night for guarding Tata Motors plant site at Singur in the wake of yesterday’s protest during “bhoomi pujan”. The CPI(M) cadres in the areas have also been asked to organise round-the-clock vigil at the site. The order under Section 144 CrPC, which was reimposed on Singur and adjoining areas, had also been extended for an indefinite period. Meanwhile, the Trinamool Congress Mahila Samiti today held demonstrations in front of the Tata Industries’ headquarters at Chowringhee, Kolkata. The demonstrators blackened the Tata Centre building with tar. Carrying placards and broom sticks, they blocked the main thoroughfares, disrupting traffic. The aggrieved leaders also raised slogans and burnt the effigies of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Ratan Tata. Describing yesterday’s incident at Singur as a minor event, the Chief Minister assured Tata Motors officials that things at Singur would get normal. He reiterated that adequate protection would be given to Tata Motors during the construction period and afterwards till normalcy was restored.
23 February: Villagers at Bajemelia and Khaserveri in Singur early today partially set ablaze a fence around a plot where a Tata Motors factory would come up. In the afternoon, six villagers led by Mr Becharam Manna, convener of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee, barged into the project area to destroy a platform on which Tata Motors had organised a puja, kicking off construction work. The SKJRC linked the incidents with an anti-land acquisition agitation by displaced farmers in the area but the Trinamool Congress sought to distance itself from what hadhappened. “I was told villagers had tried to set some wooden poles on fire but no damage was done to the platform where the puja was held,” said Mr Kalyan Mukherjee, Chandernagore’s sub-divisional police officer. A senior district-level police officer said, around 3 am, the mob had gathered around the fence at Bajemelia Dakshinpara before setting the poles on fire without being noticed by the policemen. The police noticed the flames half an hour later and rushed to the place to extinguish the fire. Mr Manna said: “This is only the beginning. It hints at an an armed struggle by the displaced farmers against the state govern-ment and Tata Motors.”. He claimed the destruction of 50 wooden poles today though the police pegged the number at 20.
24 January: Intellectuals, academicians and students today joined the protests against the state government’s policy of land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram with a sit-in demonstration at Esplanade.
25 January: Farmers opposed to land acquisition in Singur twice set fire to fence posts at the Tata car plant site early this morning. Around 5.30 am, a group of villagers wrapped jute bags soaked in kerosene around 10 wooden posts and set them on fire at Beraberi, about 50 km from Calcutta. Police arrived about half an hour later and doused the flames. An hour later, a group of women came to the site and set fire to the posts again. The police gave chase but could not catch anybody. A police team later raided two clubs in adjoining Bajemelia in search of the culprits but did not arrest anyone. This is the third time that villagers have set fire to the fence posts since January 21, when the Tata Motors authorities performed bhoomi puja (Land worshipping). In Calcutta, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reviewed the situation with chief secretary Amit Kiran Deb, industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen and other officers.
28 January: Over 40 people, including 11 policemen, were injured in clashes between Trinamool Congress activists and police during a TC-led farmers’ march to prohibitory order-bound Singur where construction work by the Tatas on a car plant entered the fifth day today. A Tata Motors godown at Joypur was attacked by protestors. The incidents occurred at four points – Maitipara near Dankuni toll plaza, Nalikul, Baidyabati and Mahaeswarpur en route Singur. Some of the injured were admitted to Walsh hospital and the rest were brought to a private hospital at Dankuni. About 200 villagers at Bajemelia mouja made their way to the fenced area and uprooted the wooden poles and set them ablaze. Later, police who were busy keeping “the outsiders” from entering Singur, rushed to the spot and started beating up some locals. It was reported that villagers from Gopalnagar, Bajemelia, Ghoshpara not only uprooted the poles but also set them ablaze. Miss Mamata Banerjee has convened a meeting of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKRJC) at her residence tomor-row. Trinamool Congress supporters blocked National Highway 2 and 6 at Dankuni, They also squatted on railway tracks at Kamarkundu and Madhusudanpur. Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Mr Raj Konojia said in Kolkata that police had to lathicharge the agitators who resorted to stone-throwing against security forces at Dankuni, eight km from Singur, where police had set up a barricade to prevent the protestors from going to Singur. Mr Kanojia said police also used water cannons and burst tear-gas shells to disperse the volatile crowd. “Eleven policemen were injured in the clashes and four of them had to be taken to the hospital for first aid,” he said. He said protestors armed with bamboo poles had gathered at four points in the district in the afternoon to kickstart the days’ agitation against acquisition of fertile farmland for the Tata Motors’ project. At Maitipara, about one km from Singur, police chased away a group of TC activists when they tried to break the cordon. The Trinamool Congress claimed 15 to 17 of their supporters sustained injuries in “unprovoked” police lathicharge. Asked how many TC supporters were injured, Mr Kanojia said “I cannot give this figure as we have not made any arrests”. Condemning the police action, senior Trinamool MLA Mr Sougata Roy said in Kolkata “this is an example how far the Left Front government can go to act as an agent of the Tatas. “Though prohibitory orders under section 144 CrPC have been imposed only in Singur police station area, Trinamool activists were stopped far away from Singur at places where prohibitory orders have not been enforced. “This is a wanton misuse of state power to curb the democratic movement and help a particular industrialist.” A spokesman of the Eastern Railway said that several people blocked the railway tracks near Kamarkundu station on the Howrah-Burdwan chord line around 4.00 pm. Even though they were dispersed by the police within one hour, the banana leaves which the agitators threw on the over head wires took time to be removed. Train services on the chord line were disrupted for nearly three hours. Congress leader Mr Sudip Bandopadhyay, was allegedly gheraoed today by the agitating Trinamool activists. Mr Bandopadhyay, a former Trinamool MP, claimed that when he was returning to the city after presiding over a community marriage ceremony at Tarakeswar, he was accosted by TC activists at Nalikul in Hooghly district where the demonstrators had assembled for the party’s march to Singur. The activists allegedly abused Bandopadhyay and refused to let his car pass and he had to turn back and take a detour to the city. He was also allegedly asked by the agitators to address a meeting explaining his party’s “bonhomie” with CPI(M) at the national level.
9 January: CPI(M) said in People’s Democracy, “As far as the specific violent incidents related to Nandigram is concerned there has been no notice issued for land acquisition”
4 February: Nearly 150 villagers of Beraberi and adjoining villages under Singur Police Station assembled near the fences erected by the administration as acquired for Tata motors. The protest was a peaceful one and led by Krishi Jami Rakha Committee. When the protestors supposed to assemble adjoining the fence at about 10.30 AM to lodge their protest and shouted slogans, a large number of police bodily resisted them and resisted them to approach the fence, though on that time the area was not under 144 Cr. P.C. The police started beating protestors with their lathis and women were pulled by their hairs and abusive language was used by them, which was shown and heard by the audio- visual medium. The police charged tear gas shells and their aim was absolutely toward the village and due to that one hutment of a villager caught fire and turned into ashes. Then number of protestors including Ms. Anuradha Talwar of Right to Food Network has been arrested.
5 February: Prohibitory order under Section 144 CrPC was reimposed at the Tata Motors small car project site in Singur following fresh violence in the area, even as Tata group chief Ratan Tata flew into Kolkata late today evening for a meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya at an out-of-the-way office of the state government. After a marathon meet (lasting over two and half hours) with Bhattacharya and state Commerce and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen, Tata and the chief minister fielded questions from the media. Ratan Tata said given the pace of work at Singur, he was confident the small car would be rolled out by 2008. Tata was accompanied by R K Krishna Kumar, director of Tata Sons.
7 February: Police today fired teargas shells to chase away activists of Trinamool Congress-led Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (Save Farmland Committee) who entered the fenced off area at the Tata Motors small car project site and uprooted 14 fencing posts. Around 100 people of the committee entered the fenced off area at Bajemelia in Singur bloc early on Wednesday morning to uproot the posts. Policemen immediately launched into action firing teargas shells to drive away the disruptors. No arrest has been made in this connection, Sub-Divisional Police Officer Kalyan Mukherjee said adding, police fired 14 teargas shells. A huge police force has been deployed at Chanditola, roughly 10 km from Singur, in view of Wednesday’s scheduled march to Singur by the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind opposing the land takeover for setting up industry.
9 February: Farmers spearheading the movement against land acquisition in Singur dug up a stretch of the Bajemelia-Beraberi road in an attempt to prevent police from entering the village today. Later, Krishi Jomi supporters tried to set a portion of a fence on fire before police chased them away.
Two bodies found on the outskirts of Singur on Tuesday (6 February) have been identified as those of Jyoti Prakash Biswas, an engineering diploma holder who worked for a company that provided earth-moving equip-ment, and his driver. Police suspect they were strangled to death and dumped in roadside bushes. Biswas, 37, was found dead at Bora, off Durgapur Expressway, close to the place where Mamata Banerjee will address a rally tomorrow. His driver Kanchan Das, 32, was found at Dadpur, over 20 km away. Hooghly police chief Supratim Sarkar said: “There is no connection between the deaths and the Singur situation.”
14 February: Mr Justice Jayanta Biswas of Calcutta High Court today held that the procedure adopted by the government for land acquisition at Singherveri under Singur police station for the Tata small car factory was proper, valid and in accordance with law. Mr Justice Biswas dismissed the writ petition of Sri Padmasagar Export Company which had challenged the acquisition of its land. The firm had purchased a 4.28-acre plot at Singherveri in 2004 for Rs 45 lakh. It had constructed a factory and obtained clearance from statutory bodies including the Pollution Control Board. In spite of this, the petitioner complained the collector of the land acquisition department had acquired the company’s land by issuing a notification on 21 July last year.
Calcutta High Court today quashed the prohibitory order issued under Section 144 CrPC at Singur on 4 February and observed that it was an abuse of power and an act of executive highhandedness unreasonably restricting the petitioners’ right guaranteed by the Constitution. Mr Justice Dipankar Datta passed this order on a writ petition moved by Mr Kalyan Bandopadhyaya challenging this prohibitory order promulgated by the Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Chandernagore. The court held that this abuse of power had been prompted by extraneous considerations. It was a pre-determined and pre-judged act. Two members of the Krishi Jami Bachao Committee protesting against the acquisition of agricultural lands at Singur for the Tata small car project had filed writ petitions in the HC. They had questioned the validity of the prohibitory order promulgated by the magistrate. The court order stated that to defuse the tension prevailing in the locality and to prevent further loss of life and damage to property prohibitory orders had been promulgated in the area under Singur police station five times from 30 November last year up to 4 February this year.
16 February: Mamata Banerjee is returning to Singur tomorrow with the demand that work on the Tata project be stopped and the “forcibly acquired” land given back. “My demands remain the same,” she said tonight. While the government has said only around 30 acres out of the 997-odd were acquired without the owners’ consent, Mamata has been insisting that over 450 acres were forcibly taken away. Mamata will address a rally near Kamarkundu station, 5 km from the Tata Motors plot and 50 km from Calcutta. It would be the first Opposition rally in Singur in over two months. Mamata was stopped on her way on November 30 because Section 144 was in force there. Trinamool Congress MLAs vandalised the Assembly in protest. The order was in force for 60 days from November 30 and was extended twice till the midnight of February 14.
The chief minister, the industries minister, their departmental secretaries, the chief secretary and the home secretary reviewed the Singur situation today.
23 February: Within a fortnight of pulling up the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government for “abusing power” by imposing Section 144 in Singur, Calcutta High Court today posed some tough legal questions to the state on the process of land acquisition there. Acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya asked the government to file an affidavit within April 13 furnishing all the details justifying the legality of the acquisition. The HC questionnaire wants the state to clarify whether all the owners of a land-holding in Singur have put their signatures on the consent agreement that the state has been flaunting all these days. The acting chief justice asked state advocate-general Balai Ray whether the state government could acquire land for a single project under two different sections of the same Land Acquisition Act, 1894.
25 February: Trouble broke out at Beraberi Purbapara in Singur today after agitating farmers forced their way into the fenced off plot belonging to Tata Motors in a desperate bid to reoccupy land that the government has “forcibly” acquired in a bid to set up a car factory. Shortly after the attempt to demolish the fence was thwarted by police, farmers staged a sit-in nearby, prompting adminis-tration to deploy additional police forces and RAF in the area. Construction work of the boundary wall of the plot was badly affected. Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) members alleged that farmers were “dragged by the collar” and “policemen passed lewd comments” at women who participated in the agitation. Police, however denied the charge. “No one has been arrested. We are keeping a watch on the situation,” Mr Kalyan Mukherjee, SDPO, Chandernagore, said. Mr Becharam Manna, convener, SKJRC, said that the protest will continue till tomorrow. It was learnt that social activist Miss Medha Pateker will visit Singur on the same day. Trouble began around 11.30 a.m. today, when more than 2,000 farmers from Beraberi, including a few hundred women, marched down to the fenced off plot at Beraberi Purbapara and tired to pull down the fence. They were shouting slogans against the state government and Tatas. Policemen, who were guarding the fenced-off plot, intervened immediately. After being resisted, farmers entered into a scuffle with the police triggering tension. It was alleged that Mr Becharam Manna, convener, SKJRC, was assaulted by cops. Farmers from Bajemelia, Khaserveri, Gopalnagar, Singherveri, also joined their counterparts from Beraberi following rumours that the women were assaulted by the police. Later, agitating farmers burnt effigies of the chief minister and CPI(M) central committee member Mr Benoy Konar. In the afternoon, senior police officers held a series of meeting with SKJRC leaders and asked the farmers to call off the protest.
2 March: Local people of Khaserveri in Singur dug up a portion of the road leading to Tata’s small car project area near Bajemelia Ujjwal Sangha this afternoon. Farmers said that they dug up the road to prevent police from entering the fenced-off plot and to disrupt supply of bricks and cement for construction of boundary wall around the project area.
9 March: Tata Motors finally got possession of land for its small-car factory in Singur on today. The state government today signed an agreement with Tata Motors for the controversial small-car factory at Singur, leasing out 949.5 acres of land to the company for 90 years. The deal, however, still remain shrouded in secrecy, as the principal secretary of the state industries department, Mr Sabyasachi Sen, who was one of the signatories, declined to divulge details of the package of incentives being offered to the automobile major on the specious plea that the Assembly was in session. Commerce and industries secretary Sabyasachi Sen, WBIDC MD Debashis Shome and Tata Motors ‘R S Thakur inked the 90-year lease deal after a day of high drama. The final signature was put by Thakur on a hospital bed. Finally, at 6 pm, Sabyasachi Sen broke the news. The state officials first signed the deal and then sent it to Thakur, who is undergoing treatment at a city hospital. But neither the state nor Tata Motors revealed any details — such as the price of the land or the annual lease rent rates. The official excuse: the Assembly is in session. “My minister (Nirupam Sen) will place the details in the Assembly,”the commerce and industries secretary said. The company has already been carrying out landfilling at the site based on the “permissive possession” it had earlier got from the state. The factory will be built on 645 acres, while 290 acres are for the ancillary units. A further 14.5 acres have been allocated to set up a power sub-station and WBIDC plans to use 47 acres of vested land for beefing up local infrastructure. The land-use plan adds up to 996.5 acres, falling a little short of the already acquired 997.11 acres. Tata Motors has decided to scale up its investment by Rs 500 crore from the initial Rs 1,000 crore for the 2.5-lakh capacity main plant, and an expected Rs 500 crore for the ancillaries. According to sources, the deal gives Tata Motors financial incentives that would offset the tax incentives offered by states such as Uttarakhand to the automobile giant. Sources in the commerce and industries department hinted that WBIDC bought the entire land from the land and land revenue department and leased it to Tata Motors for the factory and signed a separate lease deal for the ancillaries. The financial part of the deal — still a secret — involves sops that may help the Tatas keep the car’s price within limits despite paying central sales tax that it could have avoided in Uttarakhand or Jharkhand. WBIDC plans to balance this burden with a deferred payment provision of the total lease rent in 10 easy instalments.
The government proposes to set up a panel — with representatives from the state, WBIDC and Tata Motors — to ensure that the land-use agreement is adhered to.
Two days after senior Trinamool Congress MLA Sadhan Pandey spoke out in favour of Tata Motor’s small car factory in Singur, he was suspended from the party for an indefinite period. Soon after his suspension, Pandey stepped on the gas, and took on Trinamool chairperson Mamata Banerjee, holding her responsible for the “absence of democracy” in the party.
12 March: Haradhan Bag, a farmer of Singur committed suicide on Sunday (11 March) night, who, according to his family members, refused to part with his land for the Tatas’ small car project. A day after his suicide, the state government seemed unsure about the victim’s share of land in the project area. Bag’s family members and supporters of the Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (KJRC) had claimed yesterday that the victim owned 55 cottah land in Beraberi and had refused to hand it over to the state government for the car project. However, the district administration today said that they would have to check records to discern whether Bag had any land inside the project area. Mr Vinod Kumar, the Hooghly district magistrate said: “We know that his family and legal heirs have land in the project area, but we have to check whether Bag himself had any property within it.” Director of industries, Mr MV Rao, refused to comment on the issue. Meanwhile, supporters of KJRC denied the district administration’s claim, saying that Bag himself owned a plot which was forcibly acqu-ired by the government. “We have necessary documents to prove that Bag owned land in the project area,” claimed convener of the committee.
13 March: Trinamool Congress legislators staged a walkout after the Speaker refused to allot more time during the Question Hour to raise the issue of Haradhan Bag’s suicide at Singur. Later in the lobby, Leader of Opposition Mr Partha Chatterjee demanded chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee issue a statement in the Assembly on the agreement between the state government and Tata Motors. He maintained that the “ clandestine deal” between the state government and Tata Motors had driven Bag to take the extreme step. The Speaker today threatened to adjourn the Assembly session sine die if ministers did not change their habit of skipping the House in future. The Speaker, Mr HA Halim had to adjourn the House for half an hour this afternoon since no minister was present on the floor. The matter was pointed out to the Speaker by the CLP leader Dr Manas Bhunia.
The state government claims it’s helping the dispossessed farmers buy land in the Singur block itself or nearby. But the list of such buyers prepared by the district registrar, Hooghly, reveals the pathetic efforts being made by the state government to sell the story that farmers have parted with their lands voluntarily. Prefacing the details of the persons who have bought plots of land and the mouzas where the land is located, the district registrar noted that “the list is illustrative and not exhaustive.” From October, 2006 to 12 February such purchases were made. But 10 of the plots were bought on behalf of one marketing farm. Only two plots were bought by two farmers measuring 59.16 decimal and 27.23 decimal. An official of the state land and land reforms department said the government had decided to help the dispossessed farmers buy land if they so wished as an alternative to the land they had handed over for the small car project.
Unfazed by the ongoing anti-land acquisition movement in the state, chief minister Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said that the government would now accel-erate the pace of industrialisation in the state. Speaking at the inauguration of the new office of West Bengal Industrial Infra-structure Development Corporation, Mr Bhattacharjee said: “We took a long time to convince people of the efficacy of our industrial policy. Now we have achieved a turnaround. In fact, it is not only a turn-around. We have begun walking on the right path and need to increase our pace to keep up with the fast-changing world.” The chief minister, while addressing the assembled employees harped repeatedly on the need for speeding up the process of industrialisation. He claimed that with the inflow of capital in the state, both foreign and from within the country, the need of the hour was to accelerate the pace.
16 March: Agitating farmers demolished a portion of the boundary wall of the plot where the Tata’s proposed small car project is going to come up near Sanapara in Singur this afternoon and set the watch tower inside the area on fire. They also hurled crude bombs in the fenced-off plot near Singherveri and chased away labourers working in the project. The farmers uprooted a portion of the fence near Beraberi Purbapara and burnt down a few wooden poles before being chased away by police. Four vehicles were also damaged near Kamarkundu railway station. Security of the project area has been heightened with more policemen being deployed there to thwart possible attacks on the fence. Farmers took out a rally near the project site in the evening and warned the government with dire consequences if “forcibly” acquired land was not returned to them. No one has been arrested in this connection.
State industry minister Mr Nirupam Sen today announced that Tata Motors would get a Rs 200-crore loan at a rate of one per cent interest from the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation for its small-car plant. He said no money was being spent from government exchequer but the WBIDC would take a loan from the market to extend this loan to the Tatas! The information was a part of the disclosure on the incentive package for Tata Motors made by Mr Sen in the Assembly. He said the government had offered incentives on land, a soft term loan and refund of VAT for the first 10 years of a 90-year lease. “We have acquired 997.11 acres of land of which 645.47 acres, on a 90-year lease, has been handed over to Tata Motors for setting up a small-car unit. The remaining 290 acres has been earmarked for an ancillary unit or vendor park,’’ Mr Sen said. “Out of the 645.47 acres, the state government would take up-front payment for only 290 acres. In addition, the Tatas would have to pay a yearly rent at the rate of Rs 8,000 per acre for 290 acres.’’ The minister explained Tata Motors will pay Rs 1 crore annually by way of lease rent for the first five years. Thereafter, for every five years, there will be a 25 per cent hike in the lease rent for the next 30 years. From the thirty-first year to the sixtieth year, there will be a 30 per cent hike in the lease rent every 10 years and from the sixty-first year to the ninetieth year, the Tatas will pay at an annual flat rate of Rs 20 crore. The comprehensive lease rent for 90 years will thus come to nearly Rs 850 crore, he said. The incentives had been offered to counter concessions offered by other states.
18 March: A portion of the boundary wall of the Tata Motors’ small car project site at Singur was damaged early today when explosives planted inside hollow iron pipes kept hidden in a drainage outlet went off. Explosives secreted in six other drainage outlets of the boundary wall near a Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee camp at Gopalnagar Bospara were later detected. The blast was triggered around 3:30 a.m. Officers of the bomb squad of the state police rushed to the spot and unearthed the high-intensity charges which were believed to have been planted to blow up the boundary wall. Police are still not sure of the brain behind the act. “We are probing the matter. Nothing can be disclosed at this point of time,” Mr Anuj Sharma, DIG (Burdwan range), said. No one has been arrested in this connection. A senior police officer said that policemen posted at the project site had heard the sound of an explosion coming from the Gopalnagar Bospara-end of the boundary wall early today. They reached the spot to find a portion of the wall damaged. The blast was triggered a few yards off a Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee camp. Senior officers were later informed of the explosion and a search was eventually mounted. Policemen found six iron pipes packed with explosives in six different drainage outlets of the boundary wall. The objects were later defused.
19 March: CPI(M) said in People’s Democr-acy, “There was no notification for land acquis-ition in Nandigram. There was only a notice issued by the Haldia Development Authority announcing the intention to acquire land in certain areas.”
27 March: In a significant development, the West Bengal government today admitted that its advocate general made an “erroneous submission” to the Calcutta High Court on the compensation for farmers whose land was acquired for the Tata Motors’ car plant in Singur. Retracting its earlier submission that land had been acquired and awards passed for compensation for the project under two sections of the Land Acquisition Act of 1894, the state government said in an affidavit that all awards were passed under one section of the act and there was no question as such of violating any law. The affidavit sought to clarify that the submission to the court on February 23 that two awards were passed under sections 11(1) and 11(2) of the act were incorrect as the awards were passed under only one provision– section 11(1). However, it said that though no award was passed under section 11(2) of the act, compensation had been paid in terms of an agreement in writing under the said section. The affidavit also said that the state’s advocate on record, Sitaram Samanta, had “wrongly given instructions in respect of the payment and consequently the AG regretted to having made such a submission”. The state govern-ment had come in for severe criticism by a division bench comprising then acting Chief Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharjee and Justice K K Prasad on February 23, when the advocate general said that compensation was paid under two sections of the law to farmers. The bench, observing that the acquisition process seemed prima facie to be illegal, cited a Supreme Court judgement in which the apex court had ruled that two sections of the same law could not be used at the same time. The affidavit submitted by the government to the Court on 27 March 2007 says that only 30% of the landowners of Singur who own 287.5 acres of land had given consent in writing (That means, around 65% who have even collected cheques still against this forcible land acquisition).
29 March: Tata Motors managing director Ravi Kant today stoutly defended the company’s selection of Singur as the site for its proposed small-car plant, emphasising that it was based on sound business sense.“We choose where we want to set up the plant and nobody has the right to speak about the location. It is entirely our choice,” Kant said. “I personally visited twice all the six sites shown by the Bengal government. I was part of the decision-making process in which Singur emerged as the clear choice based on sound business sense,” he added. Kant also defended the government’s stand on providing incentives to the company. He said various state governments are still making offers. “Why should we consider the word ‘incentive’ bad? Industrialisation in Bengal over the past has been very poor. If a government is willing to rectify the situation by providing incentives, there is nothing wrong,” Kant said. “Bengal has missed out earlier on auto industries…. When the present government expressed keen interest in re-industrialisation, we thought why not be the first one to capture this opportunity?”
Leader of Opposition Partha Chatterjee today served a privilege notice on chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, accusing him of misleading the Assembly on the Singur land issue by supplying information that was “conflicting and at variance with each other”.
2 April: The CPM is working on a compensation package offering double the market value of land to farmers and equity participation in industrial units coming up on their plots to silence the Opposition and make takeovers more palatable. Land minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah has submitted the new set of proposals to state party secretary Biman Bose. He has taken into account the prospective value of land and suggested that the landloser be awarded a part of that. Party insiders said Bose tabled the proposal at the central committee meeting that concluded in Delhi today. Mollah, who was the first to voice his concern about the land acquisition drive last year, has proposed 60 per cent of the market value of farmland as solatium. In addition, they should get 40 per cent of the land’s prospective market value after 30 years.
Tension ran high in Singur today after four persons, who gave consent for acquisition of land for the Tata Motors small car factory, were assaulted allegedly by supporters of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) at Gopalnagar Madhyapara on Sunday night. The victims-Dilip Ghosh, Nimai Karmakar, Kashinath Ghosh and Mr Janmenjoy Ghosh-were appointed by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) for the security of the project site, police said.
25 April: The government today signed an agreement with Tata Motors as a result of which young men and women from displaced families in Singur would get vocational training. Commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen said 358 youths have been selected. This includes 17 ITI-trained youths who had qualified in the aptitude test conducted by the company and are now undergoing training in Jamshedpur. There would be 122 others who cleared another test conducted by the Tatas. This batch will initially enroll for a four-month course at the Ramakrishna Mission Shilpa-mandir, Belur Math. The others will be trained at ITI (Industrial Training Institute) Howrah, ITI Hooghly and ATI (Administrative Training Institute) Dasnagar. “The company will set up a training institute in Singur for jobs in automobile and ancillary industries,” Sen said after the deal was signed. Over 2,500 candidates had registered at the WBIDC camp office in Singur seeking vocational training. Over 600 of them were women. The training will be in two parts, a nine-month course for freshers and a six- month programme for those who have completed the Ramakrishna Mission course. Successful candidates will then be trained at the Tata Motors plant.
2 May: The high court today said the affidavit submitted by the government on the Singur land acquisition process was “incomplete.” The government now has to furnish a fresh affidavit by June 5, giving details on the disbursement of compensation to landowners — such as the serial numbers of cheques issued and their dates — and the rule under which the payment was made. On February 23, the court asked the government to detail the modes of payment made to those who sold their land for the Tata Motors project, about 40 km from Calcutta. The order followed a petition by Jaydeep Mukherjee, a social worker, challenging the legality of the process adopted by the state while acquiring the land. The petitioner’s lawyers said the government took over the land under two different rules of the acquisition act, which the law does not permit. The advocate-general said the government did not furnish the details because it had challenged the maintainability of the petitions.
20 May: Violence flared up in Singur as well as Nandigram today, less than 24 hours after a breakthrough that put Bengal’s principal political opponents on course to a peace meeting. In Singur, the confrontation went a notch beyond the usual cat-and-mouse game after a knife attack on police during a Trinamool Congress-led attempt to tear down a portion of the wall around the Tata small-car project. Rubber bullets and tear gas shells were fired, injuring some but none grievously, according to officials. The clashes, however, did emit enough smoke and fire — and television footage — to rustle up what Mamata Banerjee candidly described as her “daily meal”. Mamata declared that there would be no let-up in the agitation in both Singur and Nandigram but took care to point out that she stood by her commitment to the all-party meeting scheduled for Thursday.
CPM veteran Benoy Konar said, “She is a carnivore who has been requested to eat grass, which she will do only under compul-sion,” referring to Mamata’s willingness to attend the all-party meeting.
21 May: Singur protesters again tried to damage the wall around the Tata Motors site this afternoon and police had to lob tear gas shells and threaten to fire to shoo them away. Around 200 people who assembled in a playground near Kamarkundu to protest against yesterday’s police action apparently turned “violent as it began to rain”. “Led by Save Farmland Committee leader Becharam Manna, they were marching through the villages. But they took to the fields as it started pouring and headed straight to the wall at Bajemelia, where they clashed with the police yesterday” said Priyabrata Bakshi, the officer in charge of Singur police station. The protesters hurled stones when around 1,500 police and paramilitary personnel, who were there since yesterday, intercepted them. Circle inspector, headquarters, Satyacharan Dutta had to be admitted to the Chinsurah Imambara Hospital with head injuries. “We used tear gas to ward off the demonstrators, but that proved insufficient as it was raining hard and some of our men were injured in the melee. Then we flashed our arms and threatened to fire and the protesters fled,” Bakshi said. Non-bailable warrants have been issued against 61 people, including Manna, Trinamool MLA Rabindranath Bhattacharya and social activist Anuradha Talwar, for yesterday’s attack. A woman constable was assaulted and a policeman was hit with a dagger by the Save Farmland supporters.
24 May: Genocide on her lips, Mamata Banerjee burst out but not before spending 1 hour and 51 minutes in a rainbow row of leaders rarely seen on the Bengal political horizon. Neither Mamata nor the CPM sees it as the end of the road after the Trinamool Congress leader walked out of today’s all-party meeting convened to bring the homeless back to Nandigram.
25 May: The state Forward Bloc secretary today admitted lack of homework before yesterday’s all-party meeting and said he would meet Mamata Banerjee soon to fix an agenda for the next round of talks. “It’s true that we had not done proper homework prior to the peace talks,” said Ashok Ghosh, the convener of the meeting from which Mamata had walked out.
Prasanta Das chose death over compens-ation. A 45-year-old farmer from Khaserveri mouza in Singur, Prasanto Das, who had refused to part with his land for the Tata Motor small car factory, committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling of a cowshed at his residence early today. The family of the deceased owns a little more than four bigha land in the project area which was acquired by the state government for the Tata Motor project. The family had refused to receive compensation cheques. Prasanto, a father of two minor daughters, had hoped that Miss Mamata Banerjee would raise the issue of land acquisition in Singur at the all party meet at Mahajati Sadan yesterday.
27 May: The by-election to two panch-ayat seats at Singur passed off peacefully with nearly 80 per cent polling being recorded under the watchful eyes of policemen today. No poll related untoward incident was reported from other places of Hooghly. A senior district official said that 75-80 percent poll was recorded in by-election to 17 panchayat and two panchayat samit seats in Hooghly today. The two seats at Singur-one, under the Bora panchayat and the other at Balarambati, fell vacant after CPI(M) candidates who had emerged victorious in last panchayat polls died. Both CPI(M) and Trinamool Congress expressed satisfaction with the polls. “The by-election is a prestige fight,” said Mr Ranjit Mondal, a CPI(M) Singur Zonal committee member. Mr Becharam Manna, Trinamool leader, said that party cadres successfully used the “land grab” issue in the by-election.
31 May: For the first time in the country, a project promoter has offered shares in the company to owners of land to be acquired to set up the factory. The Jindals, who will build a steel plant in Bengal with a capacity of 3 million tonnes in the first phase, today offered cash and stock to compensate 742 families from whom they expect to buy land at Salbani in West Midnapore district.
2 June: At a front meeting today to discuss the peace process, Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh took everyone by surprise, saying he wants the CPM to play a bigger role. “I believe that proper homework has to be done before the second round of talks and the CPM should play a bigger role in it. I’ve given up and Biman Bose will henceforth co-ordinate the peace process. I know what Mamata Banerjee wants and that without her co-operation the talks cannot be successful,’’
Speaking at the convention, “No to SEZ” – organised by the All India People’s Convention on Nandigram, Narmada Bachao Andolon leader Medha Patkar criticised the Left Front government. “They are trying to make the people poorer. They want to hand over our land to foreigners.” She said the people of Singur preferred to commit suicide rather than hand over their land to the government for the Tata Motors project. “Thus, they have marked their protest,” Medha stated.
4 June: Jyoti Basu rang up Mamata Banerjee in a surprise move today, inviting her home to thrash out a solution to the Nandigram-Singur standoff. She was at Basu’s residence within half an hour of the call. There were clear indications that the talks had borne fruit. “After talking to Mamata, it seems to me there is a solution,” the former CM said at a joint news conference with the Trinamool leader after the hour-long meeting, which ended at 7.50 pm. Housing minister Gautam Deb was also present at the meet. Mamata was visibly upbeat to have been able to put across her viewpoint to Basu. “If Jyoti Basu listens sympathetically to the plight of the farmers of Singur, I will think my 25-day hunger strike has been fruitful. I am not unreasonable, but I want the people of Singur and Nandigram to get justice,” she said. The Basu-Mamata meeting, however, went further than the May 24 all-party talks because Singur too was discussed. Basu said he had heard Mamata out on both Singur and Nandigram and liked her attitude. “She is not against industrialisation. She told me that about 300 farmers (in Singur) have not collected cheques for the land acquired and that more than 600 acres are not necessary to set up the factory. If we have to return their plots, we will have to talk to the government. We will also have to talk to the Tatas to reorganise. But, we must ensure the Tatas don’t go away.”
In the first positive fall-out of the ice-breaking meeting between CPI(M) veteran Jyoti Basu and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Nandigram and Singur, an all-party meeting was held today successfully in trouble-torn Nandigram for the first time since January. The all-party meeting was held to resolve the issue of repairing roads which were dug up by protesters opposing the state government’s move to acquire farm land for industries. The meeting, convened by East Midnapore District Magis-trate Anup Agarwal, was attended by all political parties including those belonging to Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) a grouping of opposition parties leading the anti-land acquisition movement.
5 June: As Mamata Banerjee counts her gains after yesterday’s meeting with Jyoti Basu, she is also weighing her options for a possible compromise on Singur. Trinamool Congress sources said Mamata may be inclined to accept alternative “farmland” for landlosers in Singur.
Today, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhatta-charjee, his Cabinet colleagues Nirupam Sen, Abdur Rezzak Mollah and Gautam Deb and Left Front chairman Biman Bose met Basu at his Salt Lake residence to discuss ways to arrive at an acceptable solution to the Singur and Nandigram issues. Basu reportedly advised them to be transparent and, if necessary, make concessions to end the months-long agitation. A prolonged unrest, he warned, would ruin the state’s investment prospects. He updated them on his discussions with Mamata. According to one minister, the CM said he wanted to settle the dispute “with an open mind”. While shifting the Tata factory site was ruled out because of legal implications, one solution considered was offering Singur farmers, who unwillingly handed over their plots and did not collect the cheques, alternative plots in adjacent areas, a CPM source said. A list of plots vested with the government in nearby areas like Tarakeswar and Haripal was drawn up at Writers’ during the day. Also, the Hooghly district magistrate and the Singur block land records officer met the land reforms commissioner during the day.
6 June: Mamata Banerjee has thrown a fresh spanner in Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s peace plans. The Trinamool Congress chief refused today to accept alternative plots for Singur farmers whose land had been forcibly acquired for the Tata Motors’ factory. The government may make a few concessions, but is not revealing all its cards yet. Another round of talks with Mamata will be held to explain the situation to her. The government plans to distribute land available in Singur and adjoining blocks, but outside the factory’s fenced-off area. It also plans to purchase land under ‘Chash O Basobaser Bhumi Daan Prakalpa’ to set up homestead-cum-kitchen gardens and distribute the plots among Singur’s land-losers. Rs 1.9 crore has already been made available to the Hooghly district authorities under the scheme. But, a policy decision will have to be made, under which the land-losers will be given priority over the local poor and landless farmers, for whom the scheme is meant. Plots of up to 16 decimals (chhatak) could be purchased and distributed among the affected. In addition, some more land – now being dealt with by the Land Reforms Tribunal – could be available. Once the problems with the plots are settled, these could be distributed among land-losers and farm labourers from Singur. Land available in adjoining blocks is also being examined for distribution among the land-losers. Besides, according to estimates, altogether 165.447 acres of farmland vested with the government are available for distribution among affected farmers in the Singur block. But of this, only 34.99 acres are available for distribution – the rest is under possession. But Mamata said the offers were not acceptable to her. “An aunt can’t replace the mother,” she said, explaining why the offer for alternative plots was not acceptable. “Why should farmers suffer while the Tatas build malls on their land?” she asked. According to her, more than 600 acres were not necessary to build the small-car factory and a part of the land that had been acquired would be used for real estate projects. “I have explained all my demands to Basu,” she said.
7 June: The state government has admitted before Calcutta High Court that it has not been able to reach an agreement with farmers over the acquisition of around 300 acres of land in Singur. The government, in an affidavit, has stated that till April 25, 2007, Rs 90.35 crore has been disbursed to 10,021 people for 671 acres. The state has so far acquired 997.11 acres for the Tata small car project. It had allotted a total of Rs 118.95 crore to pay the rayats (as compensation) and Rs 0.58 crore for the bargadars. The affidavit, however, does not make it clear whether landowners yet to accept the award are not satisfied with the compensation or do not wish to part with their land. It only mentions that of the 3,124 persons who opted for agreements under Section 11(2) of the Land Acquisition Act, only 2,414 have agreed to hand over their 287.52 acres and accept the compensation fixed by the collector. The affidavit also says that several applications have been filed before the collector for referring the matter to court. These applications are now being processed. The compensation amount not claimed will also be deposited to the relevant court, the government has decided. The government has also told the high court that even before notification was actually issued to acquire land for ‘public purpose’, the collector received 1,010 objections in printed proforma. Those who had submitted these objections had made it clear that they would resist any acquisition attempt. The state calls this invalid in law but did offer the objectors hearings between August 22 and 25, 2006. However, due to ongoing violence in the area, these people could not be personally informed of the hearing dates.
The government claims that it did make an attempt to inform the objectors. In spite of this, nobody turned up for the hearings. After the notification was issued, seven objections were received. These were heard and disposed of by him on August 29 and 31. Of these seven, six have already accepted their awards and received the compensation amounts. The affidavit further says that of the 997.11 acres, 645.67 acres were allotted for Tata Motors. While 290 acres have been reserved for ancillary industries, 14.33 acres have been taken over by the SEB.
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Land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah today said plots acquired from “unwilling” farmers in Singur could be returned if such a decision was taken “politically”. The Trinamool Congress chief refused on Wednesday to accept alternative plots for Singur farmers whose land had been forcibly acquired for the Tata Motors’ factory. Mamata Banerjee, during her meeting with Jyoti Basu on Monday, had demanded that land of the “unwilling” farmers be returned. Mollah had ruled out returning farmland yesterday, citing a Supreme Court verdict. He modified his stand today. “My department is examining all options, including returning the plots to the agitating farmers. Yesterday, I just defined the legal position. Returning the land is not being ruled out. Let the issue be settled politically first. We will try and fit into our legal framework whatever decision is taken.”
8 June: The state government has admit-ted before Calcutta High Court that it has not been able to reach an agreement with farmers over the acquisition of around 300 acres of land in Singur. The government, in an affidavit, has stated that till April 25, 2007, Rs 90.35 crore has been disbursed to 10,021 people for 671 acres. The state has so far acquired 997.11 acres for the Tata small car project. It had allotted a total of Rs 118.95 crore to pay the rayats (as compensation) and Rs 0.58 crore for the bargadars. The affidavit, however, does not make it clear whether landowners yet to accept the award are not satisfied with the compensation or do not wish to part with their land. It only mentions that of the 3,124 persons who opted for agreements under Section 11(2) of the Land Acquisition Act, only 2,414 have agreed to hand over their 287.52 acres and accept the compensation fixed by the collector. The affidavit also says that several applications have been filed before the collector for referring the matter to court. These applications are now being processed. The compensation amount not claimed will also be deposited to the relevant court, the government has decided. The government has also told the high court that even before notification was actually issued to acquire land for ‘public purpose’, the collector received 1,010 objections in printed pro-forma. Those who had submitted these objections had made it clear that they would resist any acquisition attempt. The state calls this invalid in law but did offer the objectors hearings between August 22 and 25, 2006. However, due to ongoing violence in the area, these people could not be personally informed of the hearing dates. The government claims that it did make an attempt to inform the objectors. In spite of this, nobody turned up for the hearings. After the notification was issued, seven objections were received. These were heard and disposed of by him on August 29 and 31. Of these seven, six have already accepted their awards and received the compensation amounts. The affidavit further says that of the 997.11 acres, 645.67 acres were allotted for Tata Motors. While 290 acres have been reserved for ancillary industries, 14.33 acres have been taken over by the SEB.
West Bengal’s Left Front government is working on a proposal to find a solution to the stand-off over acquisition of land in Singur for Tata Motors’ car plant, veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu said today. Basu said Industry Minister Nirupam Sen was working on the proposal. “Nirupam is listing points. Legal aspects are also being looked into. Let’s see what happens,” Basu said. To a specific query, Basu admitted that there was not much alternative land in Singur for industries. “Alternative land is available elsewhere but why should land-losers go there?”
Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee has sounded a positive note on the peace moves in Singur, saying a solution could be found if there was the required political will. “It is a matter of political will and political decision. There is no legal hurdle,” Mamata told reporters today after a meeting of Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (KJRC). CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu, who invited Mamata over to his house for talks on Monday (11 June), also sounded positive. “A solution is definitely possible,” he said. Tomorrow, Trinamool supporters will block roads throughout the state between 5 and 6 pm. KJRC, too, will also start taking out rallies of “hungry people from Singur and Nandigram” in different metros. In the first phase, from June 22 to July 18, people from these two areas will be taken to Delhi, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram. “People will go to these places carrying begging bowls,” said a KJRC source. In the second phase, Mumbai, Bangalore, Jamshedpur and Agartala will be covered.
9 June: Jyoti Basu had suggested that “unwilling farmers’’ whose plots had been taken for the Tata Motors project be provided land either in the project area or outside. But with Mamata ruling out the possibility of accepting alternative land outside the project site, Sen has a complicated job on hand. CPM sources said Sen would have several options to work on. One of them relates to the 290 acres reserved for ancillary units. The land is apparently with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, which has been examining proposals from 70 units. Another 50 acres of vested land are with the government but are not part of the project area. At today’s meeting, front allies didn’t want to take responsibility for the Singur talks, leaving it to Bose.
Trinamool supporters will block roads throughout the state between 5 and 6 pm. KJRC, too, will also start taking out rallies of “hungry people from Singur and Nandigram” in different metros. In the first phase, from June 22 to July 18, people from these two areas will be taken to Delhi, Chennai and Thiruvanan-thapuram. “People will go to these places carrying begging bowls” said a KJRC source. In the second phase, Mumbai, Bangalore, Jamshedpur and Agartala will be covered.
CPM leader Benoy Konar, meanwhile, criticised intellectuals who opposed the Indus-trialisation drive of the state government. Addressing a meeting at Chandernagore, he said they held a partisan view. Intellectuals had not raised their voices against killing of policemen and abduction of innocent villagers.
The Left Front meet today ratified the decisions taken at yesterday’s CPM’s state secretariat meeting. While it has been decided that none of the 997 acres acquired will be handed back to farmers, the government is trying to work out a four-point package to give them a better deal. Perhaps the most significant step is a possible hike in the compensation package to the farmers. This, though, could cause some embarr-assment to the government and allow Mamata Banerjee, who has been spear-heading the Singur movement, to claim victory. Second, state industry minister Nirupam Sen, given the task of finding a solution to Singur, is likely to propose rehabilitation for the farmers at alternative sites which are better than the ones discussed earlier. Third, the government will try to ensure direct or indirect employment to one member of each displaced family in the Tata Motors project. And for the rest, the government will provide them direct support. Given that it is now up to the government to work out a Singur formula, Front partners, RSP and Forward Bloc, wanted to know why Jyoti Basu should have held talks with Mamata.
Trinamool relaunched its agitation on Singur during the day with an hour-long road blockade in different parts of the state, demanding that land taken forcibly from farmers for the Tata Motors factory be returned. Traffic in the city was badly affected.
10 June: Eager for an early solution to the Singur land row, CPM Party patriarch Jyoti Basu, who has donned the mantle of peacemaker, claimed at a meeting in Baguiati (Kolkata) today the package would be unparalleled in the country.
The state government has told Jyoti Basu that it would not be legally possible to return land acquired for Tata Motors in Singur to “unwilling farmers”. The decision was conveyed to the CPM veteran by industries minister Nirupam Sen on a day both the government and Mamata Banerjee appeared to be hardening their positions.
12 June: Mahindra and Mahindra is planning to set up an automobile ancillaries special economic zone (SEZ) in Bengal. A six-member team from the company’s infra-structure venture, Mahindra World City, today went scouting for land for the proposed 500-acre SEZ in Burdwan district.
13 June: Farmers, spearheading move-ment to reoccupy plots acquired for the Tata Motors’ proposed small car project at Singur, tried to damage the boundary wall of the project site three times today. The attempts were thwarted by the policemen who lobbed tear gas shells and resorted to lathi-charge to disperse the mob comprising at least 500 farmers, including more than hundred women. Farmers claimed that two local youths- Ujjwal Das and Tapan Bag, sustained burn injuries in the tear gas shelling and lathi-charge. The police, however, brushed aside the charges. Cops claimed that the attackers were chased away when they started hurling stone at policemen protecting the boundary wall. The police, however, denied the charge of teargasing. According to the police, a group of farmers, armed with shovels tried to damage the boundary wall from two different places near Beraberi around 11 am during heavy downpour in the area.
14 June: West Bengal Chief Minister Bud-dhadeb Bhattacharjee today turned down the Trinamool Congress’ demand that the land of the unwilling farmers at Singur, acquired for the Tata Motors small car project, should be returned but said an alternative proposal was being worked out by the State government. The government, however, is working on an alternative package for farmers who wanted their plots back, the chief minister reportedly disclosed at the meeting. The alternative package would be revealed to the core committee, as well as to the Left Front, after June 18 — the date scheduled for the hearing of a case on Singur in Calcutta High Court. The chief minister told the core committee that Industry Minister Nirupam Sen also informed CPI(M) veteran Jyoti Basu that it was not possible to return the land acquired for the Tata project, he said.
Villagers of Purushottampur in Burnpur today prevented IISCO authorities from taking possession of about 240 acres acquired in 1989, demanding compensation to match that of Singur.
17 June: The rumbles of Nandigram and Singur were felt in Asansol today when hundreds of villagers fought police from behind women and children, trying to stop takeover of plots acquired 18 years ago. The sticks-and-stones battle at Purushottampur was over 240 acres of non-farm land, earmarked in 1989 for modernising the IISCO Steel Plant (ISP). Unlike Nandigram, the villagers are ready to give up the land but post-Singur, want bigger compensation and a job in the plant for each of the 350 families.
19 June: The West Bengal government today announced an economic package for rehabilitation of the people affected by the Tata Motors’ small car project in Singur but rejected demands for return of land acquired for it from farmers. The package comprises training programmes for the affected persons and their employment in the Tata project, state Industries Minister Nirupam Sen told reporters. The rehabilitation scheme include provision of appropriate training, identification of employ-ment opportunities through close coordination with Tata Motors Limited in various activities /trades and preparing a socio-economic database of persons affected by the project. Besides, it includes selection of trainees by ensuring that one person from each family whose livelihood may have been affected by the project, be included. On demands that the land acquired from unwilling farmers be given back, Sen said, “There is no chance of returning any acquired land at Singur under any circumstance … No land can be returned to the farmers whether they gave it willingly or unwillingly for the Tata Motors project.”
22 June: A day after students staged a walk-out at the Ramrajatala ITI, their batchmates at the Bandel ITI went on a class boycott agitation today. The students demanded an assurance that they will be provided jobs once they complete their course. The protests began after commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen report-edly said the students need to score at least 90% to qualify for a job at Tata Motors. Tata Motors sources, meanwhile, said the company would absorb successful trainees it has selected from Singur. “If they successfully clear the training and related tests, they will become eligible for employment,” a company spokesperson said.
23 June: Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhatt-acharjee said his government has demon-strated enough patience on the Singur issue and is keen to see an amicable solution. “The Singur and Nandigram controversies have already sent a wrong signal to investors. But the government is determined not to let the situation go out of hand,” the CM said.
26 June: Chief minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, today said the CBI should complete the probe into the murder of Tapasi Malik as early as possible and the main culprit should be grilled without taking the political allegiance into account. “I had earlier said that the CBI was taking time to complete the probe. So far one person was interrogated in connection with the murder. The probe should be completed as early as possible and the main culprit behind the murder should be grilled,” said the chief minister at Writers’ Buildings. Mr Bhattacharjee also said the political allegiance of the culprit should not be taken into account while conducting the probe. “The political allegiance of the culprit is not important. The culprit should be identified and should get proper punishment. When Tapasi was murder-ed in Singur, I had ordered a CID inquiry but the Opposition demanded a CBI inquiry and I agreed as the priority was to identify the actual culprit,” the chief minister said. Earlier, the CBI arrested Debu Malik in connection with the murder of Tapasi Malik in Singur about six months back. Debu was produced in a Delhi Court yesterday. He may be brought to Kolkata by the CBI within a couple of days.
28 June: The ruling CPM today was left red-faced after Singur party chief Suhrid Dutta was charged with the murder of teen-ager Tapasi Malik, whose charred body was found at the Tata small car factory site in December last year and became a major trigger for anti-land acquisition protests. Dutta’s arrest was the second after CBI took over the case. The agency had earlier (24 June) picked up CPM activist Debu Malik and put him to a narco-analysis. Dutta and Malik will be produced in court tomorrow. CBI officers smell a rat in the entire episode. “It’s a sensitive issue. The investigation is on. It appears that the girl was heavily assaulted. It appears to be a part of a deeper conspiracy,” special branch SP A K Sahay said. Today CBI also grilled CPM district committee member Dibakar Das and two others at the special crime branch office at Salt Lake, but let them go. CPM state secretariat member Benoy Konar refused to see the case as a political murder. “Why should a CPM activist rape or murder someone when the party knows that it may upset the industrialisation process in Singur?” Konar asked.
30 June: The CPM today said a party probe had shown that Singur leader Suhrid Dutta did not have any role in Tapasi Malik’s rape and murder. “We have conducted an internal probe that has given us no reason to believe that Suhrid could have been involved in the crime,” CPM state secretariat member Benoy Konar said after a meeting last night with leaders from Hooghly district, under which Singur falls. Konar, however, made it clear that the party had nothing to do with Debu Malik, the key accused in the Tapasi case. Both Debu and Suhrid have been remanded in 14 days’ CBI custody.
2 July: The government is renewing efforts to retrieve benami or ceiling-surplus plots held by big landowners in the state in the face of a growing demand for land to set up industry. The West Bengal Estates Acquisition Amendment Bill will be placed in the Assembly on Wednesday to give legal teeth to the drive. The amendment to the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act, 1953, will extend by 10 years, under Section 44(2a) of the act, the government’s powers to suo motu revise records of land rights by another 10 years. The powers expire this November.
Sankar Das, a 45-year-old sharecropper and the only earning member of a peasant family at Dobandhi village close to the Tata factory site, died on Sunday (1 July) night at his home. His father Dulal and wife Anima claimed Sankar had died of starvation, giving the Opposition enough ammunition to blow holes in the government’s claim that share-croppers rendered jobless because of the land acquisition are being engaged on a daily basis at the factory site. “My husband was the sole bread winner in our family. He had no job for the past 14 months, making it difficult for us to arrange two square meals a day. We came to know that the government would offer us work at the factory site but it didn’t. Worse, we woke up one morning to find a boundary wall restricting entry to the land my husband used to till,” Anima said. Gram pradhan Prabhas Pal, however, rubbished the charge. “There are enough daily jobs at the factory site. Many labourers from Dobandhi come to work there daily. The number of locals at work is less than what is needed. We are thus engaging labourers from outside. If someone is willing to work, he can come and join. You give me a name, we will engage him,” Pal said. He added that a total of 1,500 labourers were engaged on Monday for excavation of the neighbouring Julkhia canal and allied sewer works in the area.
Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee today sought Central intervention in West Bengal, alleging there was something “malafide” in the Tata Motors deal for the Singur car unit. “What is the agreement between the Tatas and the Left Front government? Why is the deal so hush-hush? The CM and the CPM are both involved,” she said while addressing a meeting on the “atrocities” of the Left Front government. Banerjee, who heads the committee, asked why Tata Motors was getting power, water and land “free of cost” from the state government. The Central Forensic Science Laboratory will conduct a polygraphy test on CPM leader Suhrid Dutta, the brain behind land acquisition in Singur for the Tata Motors’ small car factory, tomorrow in connection with his alleged role in the Tapsi Malik murder case. This decision was taken today when Dutta, former CPM zonal committee secretary, agreed for it. “His consent for the polygraphy test was necessary as under the existing law one cannot be forced to give evidence against himself,” said an official. CBI had booked Dutta for ‘criminal conspiracy’ in the case on the basis of information provided to it by the other accused Debu Malik who reportedly confessed to his crime and specifically named the CPM leader as one of the conspirators behind the killing of the ‘Save Land Committee’ activist Tapsi for her opposition to the land acquisition.
3 July: Polygraph tests done on CPM supporter Debu Malik, the prime accused and approver of the Tapasi Malik murder case in Singur, have started yielding results. Acting on the findings, a three-member CBI team reached out to Malik’s elder sister Maya Das’s house at Bajemelia village and recovered the shirt and the trouser Debu had put on the day Tapasi was murdered. Debu had left the clothes at his elder sister’s house after the murder. Their colour and texture matched with what he had told the CBI. Not only that, the CBI team verified with the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) officials the names of the night guards on duty at the factory site on December 18 when Tapasi was murdered. They got these names from Debu Malik during interrogation. CBI officers will summon two of these night guards for interrogation soon. They have conveyed it to the Singur police and told them to see that they don’t leave the place without intimating the police. In New Delhi today, the CBI performed polygraph tests on Suhrid Datta — CPM’s former zonal secretary — but refused to divulge the findings. Datta will have to undergo the tests again on Wednesday, CBI sources said. The agency has confiscated the SIM card from the Nokia cellphone set that Datta used till recently. Datta is learnt to have made calls to Krishi Jami Raksha Committee convener Becharam Manna from that phone after the murder. The rumour was doing the rounds in Singur till Manna flatly denied it. “I didn’t receive any call from Suhrid Datta. I’m ready to face the CBI. I have told this to Mamata Banerjee, who is now in Delhi. It’s all bunkum,” Manna said. Taken aback by the two other names of CPM district secretariat members — Balaram Sabuin and Sunil Sarkar, Hooghly CPM secretary Benode Das on Tuesday hurriedly called a district secretariat meeting in Sreerampore to work out the combat strategy. As a first step, Sabuin has been asked not to open up before the media on the Singur murder. CPM’s Singur zonal committee members have also been asked to launch a door-to-door campaign against the “conspiracy” to clear the confusion among villagers.
4 July: Additional chief metropolitan magistrate (Patiala House court in New Delhi) Kamini Lao held that the polygraph tests on former CPM Singur zonal secretary Suhrid Datta were performed without Datta’s consent. Lao made his observation after talking to Datta in-camera. The additional chief metropolitan magistrate summoned CBI officer Partha Sarathi Ghosh today. Ghosh submitted that CBI had taken Datta’s consent in front of a remand magistrate. However, the procedure says that the consent by the accused has to be taken before a judicial magistrate.
A delegation of the Singur panchayat samiti, led by sabhapati Ranjit Mandal came all the way to the WBIDC office in Kolkata to discuss about the shifting of the temple and the crematorium that has fallen within the fenced off TATA car factory site. The trust running the temple property — spread over 30 acres — within the project site threatened to move court because the government acquired the property without even com-pensating it. The government had earlier promised to pay the damages. Similar is the problem with the crematorium. Villagers have no access to it for the last 14 months since it was fenced off for the small car project. A team of WBIDC officials from Kolkata will visit the Singur villages tomorrow to identify alternative locations for the crematorium and the temple.
Panchayat samiti office bearers have decided to launch some projects under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in the Singur villages immediately, especially after the starvation death in Dobandhi village. “A total of 200 sharecroppers and daily wage-earners from Dobandhi village have already enrolled themselves under this scheme. Fifty-nine people will be engaged in the first phase for constructing roads, culverts or installing tubewells in the villages,” block development officer (BDO) Prasenjit Chakraborty said.
5 July: Suhrid Baran Dutta, CPI(M)’s zonal committee secretary from Singur, arrested for the murder of a woman opposing the acquisition of land for the Tata Motors’ car plant at Singur in West Bengal, today refused in a Delhi Court to undergo a lie detector test. “I do not wish to be subjected to polygraph (or) lie detector test,” Dutta told Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kamini Lau during in-chamber proceedings.
6 July: An apparent contradiction in Singur consent figures provided by the chief minister and the land minister gave the Opposition ammunition to target the govern-ment in the Assembly today. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had said in a letter to Mamata Banerjee that consent had been obtained for as much as 954 acres out of the 997 to be acquired for Tata Motors. But Abdur Rezzak Mollah told the House today the government had not got owners’ consent for the acquisition of 326 acres. Saugata Roy fished out a copy of Bhattacharjee’s letter and told the land minister: “Your chief minister had said that consent letters had been received for the acquisition of 954 acres, meaning only 43 acres had not been given willingly. Today, you are saying that the government didn’t get consent for the purchase of 326 acres.” An angry Mollah said: “I’m speaking the truth. My records say… owners of 326 acres didn’t accept compensation cheques…. Rs 119.52 crore has been paid and 10,072 cheques issued.” “I don’t have the right to rectify the chief minister. Please don’t ask for that,” he added. Mollah ruled out returning the land in Singur.
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11 July: Sixteen-year-old Tapasi Malik didn’t commit suicide as the state police had earlier claimed. CBI has no doubt that hers is a case of premeditated murder. Those who burnt the Singur anti-land acquisition activist alive were goons on hire, brought from outside. They again visited the spot, two days after the December 18 murder, on a trekker from the Singur railway station, CBI claims. Its investigators reached the conclusion by tallying signed statements of a host of people, including local CPM heavyweights, during interrogation. Local trekker operators corroborated the claim. Local promoter Sailendra Sahana had admitted during interrogation he knew two of the four men Debu Malik had described. Based on their statements, CBI released sketches of four persons. It also declared a Rs 1-lakh reward for any information on the suspects. Datta’s refusal to take the lie-detector test has only fuelled their apprehension. “We have got sufficient leads to nail him. We will place them all in Chandernagore court tomorrow (12 July) when Datta is produced,” said A K Sahai, special crime branch superintendent, CBI, Kolkata.
12 July: CBI has identified Suhrid Dutta, CPM’s Singur zonal committee secretary, as the mastermind behind the murder of Tapasi Malik. Dutta was produced at the Chander-nagore court today where CBI claimed to have gathered enough evidence to hold Dutta “directly responsible” for the rape-murder. Dutta’s bail plea was rejected and he was sent to 14-day judicial custody. CBI lawyer Partha Tapaswi said there was enough evidence to nail Dutta. “He was the main planner. We have already released the sketches of the four prime accused, who committed the murder. As the case stands now, Dutta cannot be released on bail,” Tapaswi said. Dutta will appear before the court again on July 26. After this sensational declaration, it is unlikely that CBI will reveal all their cards now. After interrogating nearly 40 people, mostly villagers, the detectives had determined there were four prime suspects – all outsiders – who actually committed the murder. CBI hasn’t yet explained, though whether Dutta had only planned the murder or hired the killers as well. Sources said CBI is likely to interrogate more people to shore up its claims. Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said in the Assembly today that he would stick to his earlier statement that the government had got consent for 954 acres in Singur to set up the Tata small-car plant. Although the discussion was on the police budget, Bhattacharjee — also the police minister — chose to clear the air on Singur first following a controversy generated by land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah’s apparently contradictory statistics. The chief minister had mentioned 954 acres in a letter to Mamata Banerjee on December 20 last year. But Mollah recently told the House that the government had not got consent for 326 acres, triggering an uproar from the Oppos-ition benches. Replying to a query from Trinamool Congress MLA Saugata Roy, Bhattacharjee said: “Till there were 287 acres left for which consent was to be sought, the land reforms department was involved. After that, the WBIDC (West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation) took over.” The chief minister said the WBIDC had set up camps in Singur that made “thousands of people” curious about the consent award. “That led to further availability of consent. Moreover, there were 34 acres of vested land. All this added up to 954 acres. So, I stick to my stand. The land reforms department is also correct as per its records.” Bhattacharjee warned the Opposition any agitation that damages the wall around the Tata project would not be tolerated. “Breaking a boundary wall can’t be called a democratic agitation. We won’t tolerate such a disruptive agitation. If it is done, the government will take necessary steps.”
13 July: Senior CPM leaders once again trained their guns on the investigating agency today. Emerging from a meeting of the party state secretariat, CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu said: “It is no secret that two central agencies, CBI and RAW, are antagonistic towards us.” He wondered how CBI could issue sketches of four people, describing them as the main accused, without naming them. “Datta will defend himself in court which is considering the case.” Asked why the party leaders were protesting against the investigating agency when the chief minister had handed over the case to the CBI, Basu said the chief minister had referred the case to the agency as he is also in charge of the home department. State CPM secretary Biman Bose went a step further, accusing the investigating agency of committing excesses. “CBI is acting like a political party. It should be more restrained,” he said.
15 July: Around 200 supporters of Krishi Jami Raksha Committee attacked a police camp near the Tata Motors factory site in Singur and chased away 10 policemen today. KJRC convener Becharam Manna claimed that police had provoked them. The area remained tense for some time. Today evening, the KJRC supporters took out a procession with flaming torches in memory of Tapasi Malik, who was allegedly raped and murdered last December. Around 7.30 pm, the procession started from Beraberi. It passed through Khaserbheri, Gopalnagar and reached Bajemelia’s Bosepukur. On the way there was a police camp. Ten policemen were posted at the camp.
19 July: Police today fired teargas shells at a group of villagers trying to pull down a wall of Tata Motors’ small car factory here. Hooghly district police superintendent Rajeev Mishra said the police fired 25 rounds of teargas shells to disperse a 100-strong mob of villagers trying to break the wall. “The villagers tried to break the wall, when the police intervened and were subjected to heavy brick-batting,” Mishra said. He said there was no damage to the wall, but villagers owing allegiance to Trinamool Congress-led ‘Krishijami Raksha Committee’ claimed that a portion of the wall was damaged.
21 July: A local court (Chandannagar) today rejected the bail plea of Debu Malik, one of the main accused in the murder of Tapasi Malik in Singur, and remanded to jud-icial custody for another 14 days. Chandan-nagore chief judicial magistrate Pradip Bandyopadhyay rejected the bail prayer by Malik’s counsel Kishore Saha.
22 July: The Central Bureau of Invest-igation (CBI), probing the Tapasi Malik rape and murder case in Singur, today issued fresh summons to nightguards Bhanu Hambir and Monu Hambir, and Krishna Barik – a CPM supporter who works with the temporary canteen at the Tata Motors site. They have all been asked to report to the CBI’s Salt Lake office tomorrow. The two nightguards were interrogated on 20 July, a day before Debu Malik, the prime accused in the Tapasi Malik case, was produced in the Chandernagore court. Now that Debu’s lawyer has claimed that his client was forced to make the confession statement before the magistrate, the agency is going a whole hog to collect evidence to corroborate the charges brought against Debu Malik and CPM’s former Singur zonal secretary Suhrid Datta. CBI lawyer Partha Tapaswi had earlier said that the murder was engineered by Datta.
10 August: The ambitious Rs 100,000 car project of Tata Motors is running behind schedule, but Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata hopes that it would achieve top speed to make up for lost time. “The project is getting delayed,” Tata told reporters today on the sidelines of Tata Tea’s 44th annual general meeting here. Referring to the controversy over land acquisition for the car project in Singur, Tata said that the project would lift farmers from a life of poverty. Those who were propagating the cause of farmers should do something for them. “This controversy is politically motivated,” Tata said. “I feel West Bengal is the most industry-friendly state and has an enlightened government and a pragmatic chief minister,” he said.
Trouble erupted again at the Tata Motor’s small car project site in Singur today when a group of Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee activists attacked and assaulted engineers working on the project. About 10-12 engineers were on their way to the factory site to oversee the ongoing work around 8.30 a.m. While 10-12 engineers had gone only a few hundred metres from the lodge near Natun Bridge in Gopalpur to oversee the work some women BUPC members blocked the road near Koleypara. When some of the engineers got down from the vehicle to know what the problem was, the women attacked them and damaged their car.
11 August: A day after Tata Sons Chairman Ratan Tata’s statement that vested interests were delaying the small car project at Singur, Trinamool Congress said Tata was speaking like a politician. “Tata is speaking like a politician and his statements are like that of a politburo member of CPI(M),” Trinamool Congress General Secretary Partha Chatterjee told reporters here. Chatterjee, also the leader of opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, alleged that Tata had insulted those who had launched a democratic movement against acquisition of farmland for their project. Stating that land, water and electricity were given to the Tatas free of cost, the Trinamool Congress leader also demanded to know the agreement between the West Bengal government and Tata Motors.
19 August: Five persons, including a senior district police officer, were injured when agitating farmers in Singur once again clashed with the police while trying to inflict damage on the boundary wall of the Tata small car project site, this afternoon. Police said more than 300 farmers, armed with pickaxes, attacked the boundary wall of the project site at five spots – Khaserveri, Beraberi and Gopalnagar, Bosepukur, Shitala-tala – around 12.30 p.m. today. The protes-tors claimed that they had damaged a portion of the boundary wall near Bosepukur. Policemen resorted to tear gas shelling and lathicharge to disperse the agitators. Locals said that three farmers sustained burn injuries from tear gas shells, while police claimed that two policemen, including deputy superintendent of police (headquarters), Mr Pradip Biswas, were injured by stones hurled at them. The clash continued for at least one-and-a-half hours. The area remained tense following the incident. Security of the project site was tightened apprehending fresh attack, police said. Mr Becharam Manna, convener, SKJRC, said the attack on the wall would continue till the government returned the land. He alleged that a farmer from Bajemelia Uttarpara, Mr Ramesh Koley, was critically injured after a tear gas shell exploded on his head. Mr Rajeev Mishra, SP, Hooghly, who had rushed to the spot after being informed of the incident, said that a total 150 tear gas shells were fired to disperse the mob.
20 August: With the possibility of early elections looming large, Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee seems to be playing her cards carefully, keeping equal distance from Congress and NDA. If the UPA-Left ties break and snap polls are held soon, Mamata is ready to dump the NDA and join the Congress-led alliance to fight the CPM in West Bengal, it is believed. Banerjee, still officially part of the Opposition NDA combine, arrived here yesterday night but failed to show up at the NDA meeting today morning. Her party MP in Rajya Sabha, Dinesh Trivedi, also did not turn up for the NDA meeting saying “they were not aware of today’s meeting.” While Banerjee found excuses to miss today’s NDA meeting, her long chat with parliamentary affairs minister P R Dasmunsi, Congress leader from Bengal, in Parliament’s Central Hall on Monday, was seen as a move to build bridges with Congress.
21 August: A key member of the CBI team investigating the sensitive Tapasi Malik murder case, in which a Singur CPM leader is allegedly involved, has been booked by the agency for allegedly taking bribes to show favours to accused and suspects in probes in different cases. The accused, A K Sahay, who is an SP posted at CBI’s special crime branch (SCR), Kolkata, was under the agency’s radar for quite some time due to his suspected role in a number of cases being investigated under him. “The CBI, which has also been after its own corrupt men, treated this complaint with the same seriousness as it treats complaints against outsiders and booked Sahay on Tuesday,” said a CBI official posted in Kolkata.
22 August: Counsel Samaraditya Paul – representing Tata Motors, tried to impress upon Calcutta High Court today. Paul, while rejecting charges of mala fide intentions against the state government in handing over land in Singur to Tata Motors, claimed that acquisition for a company is actually for public purpose. Dispelling allegations that the state government had handed over land for free, he told the court that his client would shell out nearly Rs 1,000 crore to West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation in the next 90 years for lease of 645 acres required for the mother plant. The remaining land will be used to set up ancillary units. According to the lease deed submitted by Paul, Tata Motors will pay Rs 1 crore annually for the first five years. For the next 10 years, the annual rent will be Rs 5 crore. WBIDC will receive Rs 20 crore every year for the next 30 years. In this manner, the total rent payment for the first 45 years will be Rs 655 crore. This was submitted before the division Bench of Chief Justice S S Nijjar and Justice P C Ghosh, hearing public interest litigations against the Singur land deal. He told the court that Tata Motors has already paid Rs 1 crore to WBIDC as the first year’s rent. According to the lease agreement, this payment was to be made within 60 days of the deed being drawn out. Paul pointed out that the petitioners had not produced any particulars to establish any mala fide intention on the part of the state government. “The allegations and material in the petitions do not disclose any mala fide exercise of powers by the state. The court has thereby not taken cognisance of such allegations,” he submitted. Referring to submissions by counsel Siddhartha Shankar Ray and others appearing on behalf of petitioners, Paul submitted that they had not made any statements against Tata Motors. “There is every presumption in favour of the administration that power has been exercised bona fide and in good faith. Tata Motors has taken a lease for valuable consideration and not received a gift as the uninformed petitioners have alleged,” Paul further submitted.
27 August: Tata Motors today informed the Calcutta High Court it will pay Rs 855.79 crore to West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) as rent over the 90 years of lease for its car plant at Singur, even as a petition challenging land acquisition claimed that the state had gone beyond its jurisdiction to give land to the company. Presenting the figures before a division bench comprising Chief Justice S S Nijjar and Justice P C Ghose, Tata Motors counsel S Pal submitted that the company would on an average pay Rs 9.5 crore per year to WBIDC. During the hearing of a PIL challenging acquisition of farmland at Singur, Pal claimed that while the lease deed rentals provided a cushion at the beginning, the rental was stiffer in the later years. He said that WBIDC had given 645.67 acres of land to Tata Motors on a 90-year lease, on an annual lease rental of Rs one crore per year for first five years with an increase at the rate of 25 per cent after every five years till 30 years. On expiry of 30 years, the lease rental would be fixed at Rs five crore per year with an increase at the rate of 30 per cent after every 10 years till the 60th year. On the expiry of 60 years, the lease rental would be fixed at Rs 20 crore per year, which would remain unchanged till the 90th year, Pal submitted. Adding up, Tata Motors would have to pay Rs 855.79 crore to WBIDC for 90 years. After completion of Pal’s submission, barrister Siddhartha Shankar Ray said as per land manual of 1991, a screening committee was to be set up for acquisition of land.
31 August: A clash between farmers and police ensued at Sahanapara crossing off Singur this morning after the former tried to intercept a vehicle belonging to Tata Motors. Policemen, apprehending an attack on technicians travelling in the vehicle, resorted to a lathicharge leaving six persons injured. Eight persons including three women and Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC) convener Mr Becharam Manna were arrested in this connection. A senior district police officer said that more than 100 farmers including a few women had gathered at Sahanapara crossing following rumours that the managing director of Tata Motors, Mr Ravi Kant, was coming to Singur to inspect the company’s proposed small car project site. The agitating farmers, armed with brooms and sticks erected a road block at Sahanapara crossing and started shouting slogans against the state government and Tata Motors’ chairman Mr Ratan Tata at around 9.30 a.m. Later senior SKJRC leaders including Mr Manna came to the spot and allegedly “insisted” farmers to attack the boundary wall of the project site. Sensing trouble, a police contingent led by the officer in charge of Singur police station Mr Priyabrata Baxi, reached the spot and tried to pacify the mob. Meanwhile, farmers spotted a Tata Motors’ vehicle approaching them. They tried to intercept the vehicle following rumours that Mr Ravi Kant was travelling in the car. Having failed to control the mob, policemen allegedly resorted to lathicharge in which six farmers including a woman was injured, said a senior SKJRC member. Police said that technicians of Tata Motors were coming to Singur by the car which the farmers tried to damage. Policemen later escorted the vehicle to the project site. Meanwhile, about 40 farmers led by local Trinamool Congress MLA Mr Rabin Bhattacharjee tried to force their way inside the project site through Khaserveri area. Apprehending an attack on the boundary wall police chased away the farmers. Mr Bhattacharjee was detained in connection with the incident. In another development, farmers blocked railway tracks at Kamarkundu railway station in protest against the arrest of Mr Manna throwing train services in Howrah-Burdwan (chord) section out of gear for more than two hours this afternoon.
15 September: CPM leader Suhrid Baran Dutta and party activist Debu Mallik, arrested in connection with the murder of Tapasi Malik in Singur, the site of the Tata Motors car plant, were today chargesheeted by the CBI. The chargesheet was submitted by CBI investigation officer Parthasarathy Basu in the court of Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Pradip Badhopadhyay in Chandannagar.
Tata Motors will roll out 2.50 lakh units from the small car project in 2008 and the production is likely to touch 3.50 lakh in the next few years, West Bengal Minister for Commerce and Industry Nirupam Sen said today. “I hope that next year, the first year of its production, 2.50 lakh small cars will roll out of the Tata Motors project here and the figure will reach 3.50 lakh in the coming years,” Sen told a CPM rally in Singur. He said many industrial units would come up on both sides of the Durgapur Expressway, beside the Singur project site, in the coming years. Claiming that there was an overwhelming response from farmers to hand over their land for industry all over the state, Sen said the state government has asked Tatas to involve the local people in area development programmes and the business group is training 3,000 people. The minister claimed that 70 per cent of Singur farmers gave their land voluntarily for the Tata project, while some land could not be acquired due to litigation and the remaining refused to hand over land “due to confusion”.
17 September: Faced with stiff oppos-ition against land acquisition for industry at Singur and Nandigram, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today sought the help of the Confederation of India Industry (CII) in formulating a proper acquisition and rehabilitation policy for land losers. ”We need your help. CII should form a committee to go into details on what should be the government’s policy for land acquisition, the role of private investors and the rehabilitation policy. ”If you give your suggestions, our government will seriously examine it,” Bhattacharjee told captains of Indian industry at an interactive session here. “I just cannot roll back the Tata Project. I need this project for West Bengal. The Tata Motors’ small car will roll out in the middle of next year,” he said. Bhattacharjee said that 90 per cent farmers supported the Tata project and a small section of ‘bargadars’ (share croppers) and small farmers were opposing it. ”But we cannot ignore them”, he said. The Chief Minister said his government had made mistakes at the political and administrative level on land acquisition. ”The opposition has successfully misled the people. Therefore we have decided not to go on in Nandigram,” he said.
Bajaj Auto feels the Tatas have got a very good deal at Singur. “The incentive offered to Tata Motors is quite lucrative,” Bajaj Auto vice-chairman Madhur Bajaj said on the sidelines of CII’s national council meeting here today. However, he did not comment on the proposed small car project of Tata Motors.
Eleven women were raped in Singur and 17 sexually tortured in Nandigram on March 14, according to a survey conducted by Sameekshak Samannaya, an NGO. Four persons are still missing and have not been accounted for. While releasing the report in Kolkata on Monday, former state land reforms commissioner Debabrata Bandyopadhyay said the figures had been compiled after a door-to-door survey at 2,754 out of 6,858 houses in 13 mouzas worst-affected by the incidents of March 14.
21 September: As reported by media today, the CBI claimed that CPM leader in West Bengal Suhrid Dutta, one of the accused in the Tapsi Malik murder case, was involved in infrastructure development work of the Tata Motors’ small car project at Singur for “personal gains”. “There is evidence to indicate that the accused was involved in infrastructure development work including selection of contractors for personal gain,” said the agency in its 17-page chargesheet filed in the court of additional chief judicial magistrate of Chandannagar in West Bengal.
22 September: The mysterious death of a farmer near the Tata Motors factory triggered fresh tension in Singur today. Besides the Tapasi Malik rape-and-murder case, this is the fourth such incident in Singur since land acquisition started for the Tata car factory. Thirty-seven-year-old Srikanta Shee was found hanging from a guava tree near his house at Gopalnagar of Singur. Police say he committed suicide. Shee has been out of work for a month because the farmland where he worked has been acquired for the Tata project. Srikanta’s wife Aparna said, “We were reduced to poverty. He used to graze cattle and work as a farm labourer but after acquisition of land both these occupations were gone. He became depressed.”
6 October: As media reported today, the Governor, Mr Gopalkrishna Gandhi, has asked the state government to look into a complaint that policemen, guarding the disputed site of the small car factory of Tata Motors in Singur, fired tear gas shells, while tackling demon-strators, at a farmer, Mr Ramesh Koley, working in his fields, causing him to be injured badly. Mr Koley wasn’t even participating in the demonstration. The rights organisation had lodged a complaint with the Governor after the district police superin-tendent allegedly refused to initiate a probe into the police action. According to the complaint, a 28-year-old farmer from Bajemelia at Singur, Mr Ramesh Koley, was working in his paddy field near the Singur car project site around 3 p.m. on 19 August this year when policemen resorted to tear gas shelling to quell a mob trying to damage the boundary wall of the proposed factory. One of the tear gas shells landed on Mr Koley’s forehead. The farmer, who had not even participated in the demonstration, sustained critical injuries to his head after the tear gas shell exploded. On 10 September, special officer of the Governor’s secretariat, Mr Adhikari, sent a letter (Number: 3392-S) to the secretary of the human rights body, informing the latter that the matter has been taken up with the state home department.
18 October: The recent Supreme Court ban on acquisition of “good agricultural land” has sent ripples through the far-flung villages of Beraberi, Bajemelia and Khasherberi, where large tracts of agricultural land have been acquired to make way for the Tata small car factory. The SC verdict, which stated that governments should not acquire land for a private company under the guise of public purpose, came in handy for Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (KJRC) that took out a rally today at Beraberi Purbapara to whip up sentiments against the state government. Tata Motors officials have taken care to assuage feelings by flagging off its initiative to support the cause of primary and secondary school education in Singur. Today, the company provided desks, benches, chairs, tables, cupboards and electrical fittings in addition to educational and sports materials to a primary school at Ruidaspara in Beraberi.
19 October: After a lull of a few months, violence erupted outside the land acquired for the Tata Motors’ small car factory in Singur today morning leaving at least 20 people, including five women and four policemen, injured. Members of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, which is opposing land acquisition for the factory, carried out an “unprovoked attack” on policemen posted outside the boundary wall. To push back the attackers, the police resorted to lathicharge and lobbed teargas shells. Three of the injured policemen have been admitted to hospital. Hundreds of villagers, armed with lathis, sickles, axes, vegetable cleavers and water bottles filled with petrol, assembled outside the factory’s boundary at around 7 am. They first started hurling abuses at the policemen and then moved closer to the wall.
30 October: The programme to “paralyse” normal life in West Bengal by the Trinamool Congress stands as violence was still continuing in Nandigram, party chief Mamata Banerjee said today. She said it would also be against “forcible” acquisition of land at Singur and unnatural death of computer graphics teacher Rizwanur Rehman. SUCI has also called a 12-hour Bangla bandh today.
1 November: Tata Motors will construct a “right-turn flyover” in Singur, connecting the small car plant site to the eastern flank of Durgapur Expressway to prevent traffic congestion when cars start rolling out next year. The decision to build the flyover was taken at a meeting convened by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) today. The meeting, held at the WBIDC camp located within the site premises, was attended by Tata Motors general manager D Sengupta, additional district magistrate Liyakat Ali and panchayat samiti sabhapati Ranjit Mondal. A decision was also taken to dredge the Ghiakunti basin into which water drains out from the Julphia canal. The decision follows the flooding of neighbouring villages and inundating the factory site during this year’s rains.
25 November: More than 1,500 farmers, including hundreds of women, took part in a rally in Singur this afternoon to protest against the forcible acquisition of their farm land by the state government and the alleged “mass killing” in Nandigram by the CPI(M) cadres. The rally began from Kamarkundu railway station and ended at Ratanpur crossing off Durgapur Expressway near the Singur car project site where local Trinamool Congress MLA,Mr Rabindranath Bhattacharjee and convener of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC), Mr Becharam Manna, addressed the gathering. Farmers who took part in the rally demanded that plots “taken away by the state government from the farmers at gunpoint” be returned to them immediately.
26 November: A month after completion of hearing, the Singur land acquisition case was today reopened before the Calcutta High Court following the apex court’s ruling that no government had the right to acquire agricultural land on the plea that private industry would be set up in public interest. The hearing commenced before a division bench comprising Chief Justice S S Nijjar and Justice Pinkai Chandra Ghosh. The case was reopened after the petitioners’ lawyer Siddhartha Shankar Ray was allowed to submit a fresh application to the court on November 22. In his submission at the hearing, Ray cited the ruling of the Supreme Court on September 12. Advocate General Balai Ray said the land in Singur was acquired by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation for industrialisation to create employment opportunities and boost the economy of the area. While noting the Supreme Court judgement cited by S S Ray, the division bench said that it would study the apex court order.
The bail applications of former CPI(M) Singur Zonal committee secretary Suhrid Dutta and Debu Mallik arrested by the CBI for their role in the murder of 18-year old Tapasi Malik were rejected by a court here today. Hooghly District Judge Yudhisthir Haldar rejected the bail prayers of Dutta and Debu Malik and transferred the case to the Chandennagore First Track First court. The Chandennagore First Track First Court will hear the matter on November 30.
30 November: Charges against the accused in the Tapasi Malik murder case — CPI(M) Hooghly district committee member, Suhrid Dutta and his associate Debu Malik — will be framed in the first fast track court in Chandernagore on 7 December. Additional district and session judge of the Chander-nagore first fast track court, Mr. Amar Kanti Acharya passed a direction in this regard today turning down the petition of defence counsel who sought a 15-day stay order against direction of the Hooghly district and session judge, Mr Judhisthir Haldar, who sent the Tapasi Malik murder case to the Chandernagore court for trial on 26 November. Advocate of Dutta, Mr Sandip Dutta, moved a separate petition seeking that the process of framing of charges be adjourned for 15 days. Mr Dutta told the court that he moved the adjournment petition because his senior, Mr Arindam Mukherjee, who is defending the murder accused CPI(M) leader, was absent in the court today.
7 December: A local court today framed charges against former CPM Singur zonal committee secretary Suhrid Dutta and co-accused Debu Malik in the murder case of 18-year-old Tapasi Malik. Fast track court magistrate A Acharya, who rejected their bail pleas, questioned Dutta whether he pleaded guilty. Dutta said he did not. The magistrate fixed January 28 to begin the trial, during which 64 witnesses would be examined in 20 working days. Earlier, opposing Dutta’s bail, CBI counsel Partha Tapasyii told the court that Dutta and Malik had not been given bail by the Calcutta High Court and should not be granted bail from this court as their release might hamper probe. The CBI had presented a well documented CD to the court which demonstrated their involvement in the case, Tapasyii said. Dutta’s counsel, Keshab Lal Mukherjee and Arindam Bhattacharjee prayed for bail.
13 December: The state’s Tata connec-tion is getting stronger. Today, Telco Cons-truction Equipment Company Ltd (Telcon) was allotted 250 acres in Kharagpur on a 99-year lease to set up a Rs 600-crore heavy earthmoving equipment facility. Telcon is a joint venture between Tata Motors and Hitachi. “On Thurs-day, we met 35 component makers interested in setting up shop at the vendor park near the Tata Motors plant in Singur,” State commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen said. “Their combined investment in Singur will be Rs 2,200 crore in the first phase. They will employ 2,750 people initially, which will go up to 4,000.”
17 December: A day after chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee talked about the wonder that Singur would be, an unemployed farm worker killed himself at Singur’s Khaserbheri Shibtala today. Shankar Patra (48) was found hanging in the cattle shed behind his mud house around 2 pm. Son Pratap said Shankar had taken to working in other people’s farms after his tea-shop was burgled. But the state took over the land, where he regularly found work, for the Tata factory. Shankar then joined the anti-land acquisition movement. Though many farm hands got work at the factory site, Shankar did not. Shankar was jobless for weeks and depressed, said Pratap. “We have nowhere to go. Since we went against the government’s plans, no one cares for us,” said widow Asha.
25 December: Senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee today came out in support of acquisition of land for industrial development and made a veiled criticism of Trinamool Congress which has been leading an anti farmland acquisition movement in West Bengal.
2008
1 January: The much-awaited “people’s car” will roll out of the Singur factory on time, the state government said today at the Writers’ Buildings in presence of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and commerce and industries minister Nirupam Sen. The government decided to implement a Rs 170-crore irrigation project which would channelise the accumulated water through the Ghia and Kunti rivers near Singur. The commerce minister said, “This irrigation project is not just for the Tata unit — it’s for the low-lying region around it. It’s a master scheme for the entire region.” The irrigation department is working round the clock to implement the Centre’s 30-year-old Ghia-Kunti scheme. The state government may ask the Tatas to pitch in. MP Rupchand Pal, who also attended the meeting, said, “The cars will roll out in the middle of 2008 as scheduled. There is no problem now, residents are cooperating because they, too, are getting jobs.”
3 January: The assembly and roll-out of Tata Motors’ small car would be from the Singur plant in the state and not from Pune or Uttarakhand as speculated, a west Bengal government official claimed today. “It would be silly if the company rolled out the small car from a different plant,” the official said. However, a Tata Motors’ official, when asked on the company’s decision on location of the roll-out of the low-cost car, said: “We expect to start commercial production in the middle of next financial year as stated in earlier occasions.” The WBIDC official said that although the company planned to showcase the car at the upcoming Auto Expo at New Delhi this month, it would be a prototype from the Pune plant. The mother plant would require 640 acre and the vendor park 290 acre. Already, nearly 55 vendors have agreed to come to Singur, with a promised investment of Rs 2,200 crore. This was in addition to the Rs 1500-crore investment to be made by Tata Motors at the plant.
Socialism for the world and capitalism for West Bengal — this is how chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has charted out his development path, given the constraints of a state government. Taking a U-turn from the Left demand for nationalisation of industries in the ’60s, he made out a strong case for capitalist industrialisation at the 42nd anniversary of the CPM’s Bengali mouthpiece, ‘Ganashakti’, today. “Some people say industrialisation is fine. But will that be a socialist mode? For them, I would like to say that industrialisation in West Bengal has to follow the capitalist course. I am aware of the sweat and tears that capital brings with it, but there is no way out. Where from shall we get the money? Our government doesn’t have funds,” he said, clearing pointing to the sea change in the CPM’s mindset till the ’80s when bourgeois was a dirty word. He wants Left Front partners to appreciate the changing times and take a pragmatic stand on agriculture and industry. “The Jindals have taken land from a total 137 families. They’ve no problems absorbing them when they are going to generate 18,000 jobs. But the same can’t be expected from the Tatas. We acquired land for their small-car factory in Singur from a total 12,000 families. Is it feasible to engage all of them? The Tatas, however, have introduced a training programme and will absorb some from the land-losers.” Coming to terms with the changing times, the CM clipped his Leftism from offering a radical alternative to existing social order and said the Left goal now is give a human face to the market-driven path.
6 January: FB state secretary Ashok Ghose’s said today that the Tata project should be shifted from the present location. At a public meeting in Singur today the FB leader had said that the land at Singur was fertile and no industrial plant would be allowed there.
That party adventurism in Nandigram and land grab in Singur hit the CPI(M)’s support base in Hooghly hard became evident with the party losing control of managing committees of four schools, including one located in Singur, today. According to reports, all six CPI(M)-backed candidates, who contested the election of the managing committee of Basubati Bijonbihari Girls’ School in Singur, have been defeated by their counter-parts in the Trinamool Congress. In 2005, the CPI(M) had won all these six seats unopposed. Local residents claimed that “land acquisition at gunpoint” and “Nandi-gram massacre” resulted in the defeat of CPI(M) candidates. In Polba, around 20 kilometre from Singur, the CPI(M) lost six seats in the managing committee election of Fom-dhara High School, yesterday. Candid-ates backed by the Trina-mul Congress and the Forward Bloc defeated their counterparts in the CPI(M) for the first time in the school’s history. The CPI(M) suffered a major setback after all its six candidates lost the election to the managing committee of Bansberia Boys’ School yesterday. All the six Trinamool Congress-backed candidates emerged victor-ious as three-fourth of the total voters, who are parents of school students, voted against the CPI(M).
7 January: The CPI, a partner of the ruling Left Front today distanced itself from constituent Forward Bloc’s stand that the Tata Motors small car project at Singur should be relocated to Kalaikunda in West Midnapore district. “We don’t think there is any scope for re-opening the Singur issue at this stage when the plant is nearing completion,” CPI state council secretary Manju Kumar Majumder told reporters.
10 January: The West Bengal govern-ment (state Industry Minister Nirupam Sen) today expressed happiness over Tata Motors unveiling its much-awaited people’s car ‘Nano’, and said the Singur project, where it would be manufactured, will be completed in time.
Today Ratan Tata unveiled the Nano in Delhi’s Pragati Maidan. And hundreds of kilometres away in Kolkata, a visibly elated West Bengal industries minister Nirupam Sen said Nano was a pride for the state. “Many people had doubts about the car. The car, as promised, is priced at Rs 1 lakh, and it’s a matter of pride that it’ll roll out from Singur.” But, amid the huge mass of mediapersons and other people gathered inside Hall No. 11 for a first look at Tata’s Nano car, a group of six women, activists of Delhi Soliderity Group, a forum of left-leaning individuals and organizations, dressed in white T-shirts stood out. Written in bold red on their T-shirts were provocative blurbs like “The Rs 1 lakh car has Singur people’s blood on it” and other such slogans. Standing in a single line, the women were talking animatedly to curious journalists and distributing leaflets. The group claimed that the lands of many farmers at Singur were forcibly taken away by the West Bengal government which used CPM cadre for the purpose. At a press conference later in the day, six farmers from Singur claimed they had not taken the compensation being offered for their farmland. The press conference was addressed by Medha Patkar, among others. The protesters also questioned Tata’s claim that they would provide employment to locals at the plant, saying only 12 people had been given jobs so far and that too as security guards. “Tatas are training some local youths at ITIs, but they have given no assurances on whether they would be absorbed.”
11 January: The fracas over retrench-ment of security guards started yesterday – when Ratan Tata was unveiling the Nano – and spilled on to today, with local CPM activists barging into the walled-off factory site and stopping engineers, mechanics and contractors from doing their work. The embarrassed CPM top brass distanced itself from the agitation but local leaders felt the agitation was “justified”. It was in December last year that West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) had decided to cut down the number of night guards at the factory site, but for some strange reason it waited for the day of the unveiling of the Nano to inform the 131 retrenched workers. Protests broke out, leading to chaos all through yesterday. Today, the sacked guards led by flag-flaunting Citu men stormed into the factory site around 8 am. It wasn’t long before the CPM top brass came to know of it. Party leaders at the Alimuddin Street headquarters frantically called up the Hooghly CPM office at Serampore to stop the agitation.
13 January: The state government will take full responsibility of farmers and their families who give away land for industrial projects, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhatta-charjee told a massive gathering of CPM workers on Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata today. The state remains committed to industrialization, Bhattacharjee said, but in balance with agriculture. The message to the Opposition and dissenting Left Front partners: “there will be no looking back”. “If land has been taken away from farmers, then it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that the family gets a new source of income and livelihood. The government cannot shy away from this responsibility. We don’t need to be told by Congress or Trinamool Congress about what needs to be done for the farmers,” he said at the open session of CPM’s state conference. Bhattacharjee, who had once said “money has no colour”, said they were not concerned about the name of the business group or country coming for investment — what mattered was jobs. “It can come from the Tatas, Jindals, American or Chinese companies, that is not the issue. We want to see how many people will get jobs once these industries come up. That is the only criteria,” he said. “We are not bothered who will buy the car manu-factured at Singur. What is important is that 6,000 people will get work there.
18 January: In a major boost to the Bud-dhadeb Bhattacharjee government, Calcutta High Court today put its seal on the state’s land acquisition in Singur, paving way for Tata Motors’ Nano to roll out from there. A division bench comprising Chief Justice S S Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh dismissed all the 11 petitions against land acquisition in Singur. The bench observed there was no malafide intention on the part of the state in acquiring land there. “There was no colourable exercise of power by the government during acquisition of the land. Landowners who are not satisfied with the compensation amount may move the land acquisition collector.” Today’s judgment has been on hold since August 30 last year. In Singur, compensation has been paid by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corpor-ation (WBIDC), a state body. Some petitio-ners had relied on a recent Supreme Court order in which it had quashed a bid by a private company and the government of Punjab to acquire agricultural land for a tractor company.
Business associations today said the Calcutta High Court judgment on Singur will restore investors’ faith in Brand Bengal and open the floodgates for a greater inflow of capital. “The state’s image will receive a boost and companies will no longer feel jittery about setting up shop in the state,” Assocham president and Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot said. Dhoot has been one of the biggest champions of the state’s industrial potential in the recent past. “The HC judgment will restore credibility in the state’s industrialization drive,” CII eastern region chairman and JSW Bengal Steel joint MD Biswadip Gupta said.
8 February: Over 500 farmers today blocked the Durgapur Expressway near Singur demanding the return of agricultural land that they alleged has been forcibly acquired from them for the Tata small car project. According to the police, the farmers and the Trinamool Congress activists blocked the highway near Haterchawk-Beltola area leading hundreds of vehicles getting stranded.
The body structure of the new Rs one lakh Tata Nano car will be built by NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul-owned Caparo Group. Selected inner structural panels will be pressed and assembled by Caparo at a new facility in Singur, adjacent to the Tata Nano manufacturing plant in West Bengal. Caparo, the manufacturer of the world’s highest performance road-capable hyper car, the Caparo T1, will supply 60% of these assemblies, with the rest being manufactured in-house by Tata. To meet Tata’s ambitious cost targets, Caparo has installed a new semi-automated production line with zero fault forward quality control systems. “The body technology is relatively conventional, but the manufacturing technology is the result of very sophisticated analysis to ensure high-quality, low-cost production,” Caparo Group CEO Angad Paul said today.
10 February: A man rendered jobless after the 1.5 acres he used to share with others was acquired for the Tata Motors plant here died today, allegedly of malnutrition. Kalipada Majhi, 45, of Beraberi Purbapara, about 100m from the project site, did not respond when his wife Kalpana called him at 7am today. “I was told that Kalipada was a sharecropper and had been ailing. He was left with no land to till after the acquisition for the Tata project. Only a probe will reveal whether he died of malnutrition,” said Chandernagore subdivisional officer Shekhar Roy, who has ordered an inquiry.
25 February: Angry farmers thrashed West Bengal Industrial Development Corpor-ation (WBIDC) surveyors today for being denied the price of land they had given to the latter. Block development officer Prasenjit Chakrabarty and Singur panchayat samiti sabhapati Ranjit Mandal were also heckled by the mob. Tension was brewing in the villages since the original road to Bablabandh from Khasherbheri village was cut off after Tata Motors fenced off the site for the small car factory. In the meantime, farmers gave away seven acres to WBIDC to revamp the sewer network in the area. Even a local crematorium was fenced off. WBIDC officers promised an alternative plot for setting up the crematorium. But that is yet to happen. Today, when officials and surveyors reached the spot to carve out the road, Khasherbheri villagers flocked near the Ujjal Sangha Club. They asked the officers what they were doing all this while. Trouble broke out around 1 pm when villagers stopped the two cars returning from the site and searched for the officers. They dragged out surveyor Gautam Do and driver Asok Das and started beating them up. When Chakrabarty tried to intervene, the mob pushed him back into the car. On hearing the news, Singur police station officer-in-charge Priyabrata Bakshi came to the spot but fled only to return with a huge force. SDPO Kalyan Mukherjee finally rescued the officers. CPM-backed Pragatishil Shechchhaye Shilpos-thapan Samity convener Dibakar Das cond-emned the attack on government officers. But he conceded that the villagers also had genuine grievances. “WBIDC officers have not kept the promise they made while taking land from the farmers for the sewerage system,” he said.
29 February: As media reported today, the West Bengal government has told the Supreme Court that the Singur venture would lead to rapid industrialisation of the state. “The state government thinks that the implementation of the project at Singur will play a pivotal role with regard to devel-opments in the field of modern industry in all respects not only in Singur, but also throughout the state of West Bengal,” the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government said. The state was responding to the apex court’s notice to it on a petition filed by the Karnataka Landless Farmers Association, which was complaining against the states’ recent policy to increasingly target agri-cultural land for setting up industries and SEZs. The West Bengal government refuted allegations that 645.67 acres of land had been leased out to Tatas at throwaway prices and said: “The government has the power to form any policy and/or to exempt from paying various claims for the sake of greater interest of the state.” The association had alleged that soon 43,000 more acres of land would be acquired for two dozen companies of an available 2.25 lakh arable and arid land. Rejecting this, the state said: “Though a few thousand acres of lands are under examination for setting up industrial units in different districts of the state, out of which a major portion of land is not fit for cultivation or not at all fertile.”
2 March: Criticising the chief minister for awarding the Seva medal to an IPS officer, accused of torturing women and farmers in Singur, a section of intellectuals and human right activists have decided to meet Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi to complain about Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Mr. Bhattacharjee recently awarded the Seva medal to IPS officer, Mr Asit Paul, former additional superintendent of (Headquarters), Hoog-hly, who has been accused of assaulting women farmers and Ms Anuradha Talwar, a human rights activist near the Singur small car project site last year for protesting against the land acquisition.
3 March: As media reported today, the marginal farmers of Bajemelia and Khaserbheri villages in Singur — many of whom had earlier protested against the land acquisition for the car factory — have finally started collecting their compensation cheques from the Chinsurah collectorate office. According to district administration, the valuation for the 997.11 acres of Singur land stands approximately at Rs 110 crore. Individual landowners have so far collected Rs 95 crore for giving up their land. The government is yet to issue 2,000 cheques to individual land-losers. CPM MP Anil Basu said the farmers could have accepted their cheques earlier had they not been prevented by a section of local people. “People should understand the importance of development in this region,” he said. The convener of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, Becharam Manna, said his organization has not prevented anybody who wanted to collect the compensation cheques. “But if the govern-ment forces farmers to accept the cheques, we will keep preventing them from following the government diktat,” he said.
8 March: Fresh trouble is brewing in Singur. And this time, the aggrieved are those from the CPM who helped the government hasten the small car project despite all odds. They include the homeless people awaiting rehabilitation and a host of local security guards, those who helped surveyors, suppliers, truck operators and people whose bills are pending with the government for months. They feel let down now. The Singur CPM has taken up their case and submitted a memorandum to CPM MP Anil Basu, who came to address a closed-door party meeting in Singur today. The meeting was held to chalk out the party’s plans before the panchayat elections. Party activists present at the meet resented the way the state government and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation have denied wages to the daily labourers for months that they feared would be put on the back burner, once the Nano car rolls out of the Singur factory.
28 March: A man was found dead inside the Tata Motors’ small car project site in Singur today, police said. Rajkumar Biswakarma, who hails from Andal in Burdwan district, was working as a dumper driver, Sub-divisional Police Officer, Chandan-nagar, Kalyan Mukherjee said, adding that he was found dead at Joymolla locality inside the site with his head allegedly being smashed. Mukherjee said it was yet to be ascertained whether it was a case of homicide or accident. The body was sent for post-mortem.
30 March: As media reported today, the state panchayat department has worked out a revenue sharing mechanism for the three-tier panchayat system — right from the zilla parishad down to the gram panchayat level — for the local bodies to spearhead devel-opment projects in the Singur area. Engineers attached to the zilla parishads will examine the technical aspects of the applications and issue the trade licence as also the necessary sanction for the building plan, while the panchayat samiti will issue the no-objection certificates in consultation with the gram panchayats. According to the mechanism devised by state panchayat secretary Manabendra Nath Roy, 50% of the earnings will go to the respective panchayats and the rest would go to the Singur panchayat samiti.
2 April: Notwithstanding the opposition fac-ed by government in acquiring land for industries, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today said the state has to move ahead with industrialisation despite problems. “There is a problem in acquiring land (for industries) in West Bengal. While 63 per cent of the land was agricultural, 13 per cent was forest cover and one per cent fallow,” he said apparently referring to the opposition in Nandigram and Singur. “So only 23 per cent was left for the industry and that has been filled up. We cannot stop here and we must move ahead,” he told reporters replying to a question here. The issue was part of the discussion at the CPM congress on the performance of the Left-ruled states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura.
7 April: Caparo Group chairman, who will be going to Singur tomorrow, said Britain has a special affection for Bengal. “It is good to see that the state is forging ahead in industri-alisation and third in economic growth among the states here,” Paul said. According to Paul, the quality manpower is the biggest advantage of Bengal. “There was never dearth of quality manpower here,” he added.
8 April: The NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul, who is on a business visit to the Tata’s Singur plant, praised the Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s handling of the controversial Tata Motors plant at Singur. “I do not think that there is any other option, but to industrialise… We will have to industrialise and work for a better world,” he said after visiting Tata Motors and Caparo Engineering’s plants here. State Congress Chief and Union Minister Priyaranjan Das Munshi said, “I have not learnt politics from Lord Paul. I have learnt politics from the state of Bengal and we all defend Tata for expanding its industrial activities in our country. Tata is a global industrialist. There’s no doubt about it and we have no quarrel with the industrial arrangements of Tata. However, we certainly do not approve the manner in which the whole thing is being done by the Chief Minister. We are not changing the position despite the good works of Lord Paul.” The Trinamool Congress president said, “I cannot give a certificate to him (Lord Paul) because he is pleading for Tata because Tata is giving him business. This is a business venture nothing else.” Lord Paul’s Caparo engineering will be supplying components to the Tatas.
13 May: Tata Motors’ Rs one lakh car Nano project is still driving on bumpy streets, with the Supreme Court seeking to know why the West Bengal government acquired farm land for the project in Singur that has now become a site of a political battle between Mamta Banerjee’s TMC and the ruling CPI(M) combine.
A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan while issuing notice to the company, the state government and the West Bengal State Industrial Development Corporation (WBSIDC) today and posted the matter for further hearing in July. The apex court was hearing a petition filed by Kedar Nath Yadav, a practicing lawyer, who sought immediate halt of Tata Motors’ project, although the Calcutta High Court had earlier upheld the land acquisition exercise. Tata Motors, which proposes to roll out the world’s cheapest car Nano from the Singur facility, submitted before the court that it had invested over Rs 1,000 crore in the project and any delay would increase the cost of the car. The company had earlier requested the apex court not to pass any orders on the petition without hearing it.
The chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhatta-charjee, addressed a meeting at Kamarkundu, Singur.
21 May: The seventh Panchayat poll results in West Bengal today threw up a harsh political reality for the Marxist-led Left Front. For the first time in the past 30 years, the results reflected a distinct dent in its rural support base. In Singur Block 1, the area where the Tata factory is coming up, the CPM had control of all the three Zilla Parishad seats. The CPM and CPI had won 32 of the 44 Panchayat Samiti ( the middle tier) seats in 2003. This year, all the three Zilla Parishad seats have been won by Trinamool which also won 37 of the 45 Panchayat Samiti seats this time. The CPM managed only 8. But unlike East Midnapore Zilla Parishad, the CPM managed to win the Hooghly Zilla Parishad. The CPI(M) won’t roll back its controversial policy of industrialisation through farmland acquisition despite the defeat it suffered in areas it sought aggressively to implement its policy, Mr Benoy Konar, Central committee member, said today. “It’s an oversimpl-ification to suggest that our defeat in Midnapore East, which includes Nandi-gram, Singur in Hooghly, South 24-Parga-nas and North Dinajpur means a rejection of our policy. Several factors contributed to our poor showing in those areas and these include our failure to convince the farmers about the need for industrial growth along with agricultural development, corruption in a section of panchayats, disunity among the Left Front partners on the question of industrialisation, alienation of the party from the people in many areas and communal propaganda by the PDCI leader Mr Siddiqulla Chowdhury among the rural popul-ation,” Mr Konar said.
22 May: As media reported today, Though the state government has justified the acquisition of fertile farm land in Singur by stating that the Tata Motors’ small car factory will provide both direct and indirect employment, the state directorate of employ-ment had said that Tata Motors Limited (TML) has not notified any vacancy to any of the employment exchanges in Hooghly district so far. The information from the state labour department made it official that no large-scale direct employment would be provided in the small car factory in Singur. While replying to questions under the Right To Information Act submitted by Mr Salil Kapat, convener of Indian Society for the Fundamental and Human Rights, the deputy director of employment of state labour department, stated: “As is revealed from the deputy director of employment, Hoogh-ly, Tata Motors Limited has not notified vacany/vacancies to any of the employment exchanges in Hooghly district.” Mr Kapat had asked whether TML ever intimated to the state labour department as to how they would recruit prospective employees for their factory at Singur and whether Tata Motors ever approached any of the employment exchanges for personnel recruitment for their proposed small car factory. However, the reply sent to Mr Kapat on 16 May revealed that Tata Motors is yet to approach the local employment exchanges for recruiting local residents for its Singur factory. Earlier, Mr Nirupam Sen, state commerce and industries minister, had claimed that all 180 students from the land-loser families in Singur had undergone training in various Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and were absorbed in either the Pune factory of Tata Motors or other subsidiaries of the group. The minister also said some had even refused a job. Though Mr Sen, to be fair, had never promised large-scale recruitment for the car factory, the letter from the labour department has made it official that apart from the few students from land-loser families who have undergone training in the ITIs, there is little hope for common or garden variety of residents of Singur as far as gainful employment at the TML factory is concerned.
An associate of the Salim group, many of whose infrastructure projects fall in the rural belt captured by the Trinamool Congress, has said the consortium was “investing in the state” and expressed confidence of getting the support of the new zilla parishad. “We know India is not China. It is a democracy. And democracy is not a risk for us. The projects would develop the area. I am confident of getting support from the new zilla parishad,” Prasoon Mukherjee, the director of New Kolkata International Deve-lopment (NKID), told from Indonesia today. The Salim group is one of the investors in NKID. “We are investing in the state,” Mukherjee added, suggesting that the change in political equations need not come in the way of development projects. The group’s proposed projects include a six-lane highway connecting Barasat in North 24-Parganas to Raichak in South 24-Parganas, a host of industrial clusters and housing projects, two SEZs and two bridges. Some of these projects are slated to come up in South 24-Parganas, where the zilla parishad will be formed by Trinamool. Industry minister Nirupam Sen also sought to reassure potential investors, saying “there is no question of a review or rollback of the industrial policy”.Sen, how-ever, admitted that people had differences with the government’s style of functioning. “We will have to take a lesson, but that does not mean they have voted against indus-trialisation in Bengal,” he added. Responding to a question on the Trinamool leadership’s threat of halting construction of the Tata Motors factory at Singur, Sen said: “The question does not arise. The Tata project will be completed in due course.”
23 May: As media reported today, No sooner has Trinamool Congress come to power in Singur and its surroundings, it has started speaking the language of Indus-trialization. There has been no tirade against the Nano factory coming up fast in Singur, no attacks on its boundary walls and no potshots at those going to work at the site. Despite fears of trouble at the Tata Motors factory after the change in the power equation, work went on smoothly at the Singur plant. Dumpers and trucks entered the premises carrying iron beams and coils. “Work is going on,” said a factory spokesperson. Trinamool’s Becharam Manna, convener of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, which spearheaded the movement against land acquisition, is no longer calling for pulling down the boundary wall. “CPM paid the price for ignoring people’s wish. Now, we want locals to be given priority when jobs are given,” Manna said. The villagers, too, want an end to the politics of disruption. “The anger was against CPM. Trinamool will be doing the same thing that CPM has done so far. We want work. Those who are speaking against the factory are not doing the right thing,” said Tarun Malik, a tea stall owner at Bajemelia. After securing the three zilla parishad seats in Singur, Trinamool went on to win the gram panchayat seats as well. All the 16 seats in Kamarkundu, Gopalnagar, Doluigachcha (KGD) gram pan-chayat went to Trinamool, as well as the Singur-I seat, which CPM had never lost. That the resentment against land acquisition had crossed the boundary walls of Singur became evident after Trinamool won eight gram- panchayats, including Dankuni, where land was acquired for a housing project. Sensing the changing political equation at the ground level, the district administration was quick to react. Till now, all administrative decisions regarding the Tata Motors project were taken by the Singur panchayat samiti. These included submission of building plans, mutations etc. It has been decided that from now on, the Hooghly zilla parishad — which has been retained by CPM — will look after the administrative needs of the project. Trinamool leaders have not complained about this decision so far. On Wednesday (21 May), around 10,000 party supporters assembled at Singur High School, but no rallies went towards the factory site. “We have told the boys to stay away from the factory. We have nothing against it. We would have welcomed the decision had fertile land not been snatched for the factory’s purpose. People have voted us to power. If they want the factory to remain, it will remain,” said Dipankar Ghosh, Trinamool’s Beraberi gram-panchayat member.
25 May: Bolstered by the victory in panchayat elections, members of Trinamool Congress-backed Singur Krishi Jami Raksha Committee attempted to storm the Tata Motors’ project area in Singur today around 1 pm. Nearly 200 SKJRC supporters tried to raze the boundary wall of the premises. They set afire two watchtowers inside the premises and clashed with the police. The policemen lobbed 14 rounds of teargas shells. The villagers lobbed bricks, injuring one constable. The clash continued for nearly two hours, even as work in the area went on unhindered. A few hours later, addressing a public rally at Singur’s Kamarkundu Bharati Maidan, trinamool Chief Ms. Mamata Banerjee asserted that her party will not compromise with the legitimate demand of farmers whose land was forcefully acquired by the government. “I request the state government to give back 400 acres to farmers who have not received the compensation. Our agitation will continue in Singur as people have voted us to power,” the TMC chief said. Terming today’s incident as an isolated one, she criticised the Singur police for using force to thwart the farmers’ movement.
Veteran CPM leader Jyoti Basu said the party will have to learn from its past mistakes and work together for better results in the coming elections. Talking to reporters at the CPM’s state headquarters at Alimuddin Street, where the party’s two-day state committee meeting started today, Basu said: “We understand that the opposition has entered into a grand alliance against us. We will have to gear up for that and win them back who have left us.” Basu said it was not possible to meet Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s demand to return 400 acres of land to Singur farmers who have not received compensation. “Let Mamata say clearly whether she wants industry or not. Any sabotage attempt at the factory will not be tolerated,” said the CPM leader.
26 May: Mr Jyoti Basu must ask his party to accept the people’s verdict in Singur to make the state government return 400 acres of land forcibly occupied from the owners for the small car project, Miss Mamata Banerjee said today.
27 May: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told his cabinet core committee today that while planning to take over land in Singur, he knew the area was fertile and that farmers were opposed to acquisition but his hands were tied. “I knew that the land in Singur was fertile and farmers had grievances over acquisition. But I was dragged into Singur,” a minister quoted the chief minister as saying. In the wake of the uproar over Singur, Bhattacharjee had earlier said the Tatas had zeroed in on the area for their car plant though the government offered land elsewhere. Today, he also admitted taking “hasty steps in Nandigram”.
28 May: The Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee said today that she had no objection to the Tata Motors project at Singur if the government returned the 400 acres of land to those farmers who did not accept compensation. “Time and again I have been saying that we are not against industry. It is of vital importance to us. Some people might have sold their land at Singur because they needed money. I have nothing to say regarding this. But I want the government to return the land to other farmers. If that happens the factory may come up,” said the TMC chief.
7 June: As media reported today, secur-ity has been beefed up for labourers engaged in dredging the canals around the Singur small car project site after reports that they had been threatened by some unident-ified men. Police suspect that those who had threatened the labourers are Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Singur Committee (SKJRC) supporters. Though the organisation denied the allegation, it has iterated its intent to stall work on the project. According to a police officer, some unidentified men threatened Mackintosh Burns labourers who were at work near Bosepukur on 22 May, a day after the panchayat election results were declared. The next day, other labourers who were excavating a canal near Dobandhi, were also told to stop work and leave Singur. The unidentified men threatened the labourers with harm if they were seen again in the area, he said. The convener of the Singur Krishi Jomi Raksha Committee (SKJRC), Mr. Becharam Manna, had earlier urged labourers to abstain from work on the project and support the causes of the farmers, but he denied that the organisation had ever threatened them. “We have never threatened labourers. Instead, they were requested to abstain from work to express solidarity to farmers whose agricultural plots were taken away forcefully. The labourers may have been threatened by some others,” Mr Manna said. He said that SKJRC supporters would stall work on the project if the government refused to return the land plots acquired for the project to farmers. He added: “We will not allow labourers to enter the project site. A fresh movement will be started from 14 June.”
13 June: The West Bengal state government is not transparent enough to divulge details of the land leased out to Tata Motors in Singur. The state chief election commissioner, Mr Arun Kumar Bhattacharya, had to issue an order asking the state public information officer of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation to provide information to Mr Salil Kapat, convener of Indian Society for the Fundamental and Human Rights, regarding the land deal in Singur when he faced bureaucratic buck passing for nearly a year after submitting questions in this regard under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Mr Kapat had submitted questions under the RTI Act on 8 June, 2007 seeking some particulars about the land deal between Tata Motors and the state government. He wanted to know the names of the parties between whom the deed of transfer or lease was executed regarding the land for Tata Motors in Singur, and whether any exemption was granted in respect of the registration. He also wanted to know about the market value of the land assessed by the registering authority including the details of the deficit stump duty and registration fee payable thereon. These details which the applicant sought were related to two departments, department of finance and department of commerce and industries. The commerce and industries department was ready to provide the information within its purview, but the the finance department had allegedly refused to provide information on their part citing some technical problems. Mr Kapat then made two appeals to the West Bengal Information Commission seeking justice. Finally the state chief information commissioner, Mr Arun Kumar Bhattacharya, conducted a hearing where concerned authorities from the finance department and WBIDC were present. After the hearing, the commissioner ordered the WBIDC to furnish all the information to Mr Kapat within 15 days.
14 June: The Tata Nano factory in Singur is in for trouble. Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee addressed a rally with the newly elected panchayat representatives of her party today and announced total non-cooperation with the Tatas. “No panchayat representative of our party should cooperate with the Tata project without my permission. The public mandate has gone against setting up the car factory in Singur,” said Mamata. Serving an ultimatum to the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government, she asked the government to return the land it has forcibly acquired from unwilling farmers. Mamata also announced a deadline for the government, failing which she threatened to launch an indefinite stir in Singur block. “I mean it. The government should return the land by August 20. If it does not, we will block Durgapur Expressway. And, this time, there will be no rally. Villagers will perform their festivals — from Durga Puja to Eid — on the expressway itself. We will take to the ultimate,” the Trinamool chief said. With the party winning 15 of the 16 gram panchayats in Singur block, Mamata said: “Villagers are with us. We will go by their wishes and not at the whims of the state government. I will kick off the movement on August 20.” Taking the cue, Krishi Jami Raksha Committee convener and newly elected panchayat samiti member Becharam Manna asserted that the Trinamool-run panchayats will not allow the Tatas to put up electric wires or electric posts. Some local activists even went near the boundary wall of the Tata factory. But Mamata had left the place by then to meet the Muslim families in Chanditalla, where two persons died in a road accident.
15 June: As media reported today, the state government wants to hold on to the option of land acquisition as in Singur despite the political price it paid in the rural polls and the Centre’s bid to promote direct purchase by investors. In its note to the parliamentary standing committee on the amendment bill to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894, the state land and land reforms department has said there “should not be any ceiling” on the amount of land to be acquired by the government. The note will be sent to the committee after it is vetted by the CPM state secretariat and the central leadership. The amendment bill, under the scrutiny of the parliamentary committee along with the Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007, says the government can acquire 30 per cent of the land required for private projects provided the remaining 70 per cent is directly purchased by the investors. “We are opposed to the ceiling not only because of fragmented landholding in Bengal, which makes direct purchase cumbersome, but also because it deprives many land-losers of a solatium,’’ land minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said. In Singur, those who sold their land willingly had received 30 per cent over the plot price as solatium. The land department’s note wants provisions “for acquisition for government companies… development authorities and local bodies”. It also wants “provision for land acquisition for infrastructure like industrial parks… by the government or its undertakings” as well as for education and healthcare facilities, government offices and housing. Mollah said: “It would help the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and other agencies to hold land that can be leased out for private or joint sector projects.’’ In Singur, the government had transferred land to the corporation, which leased it out to Tata Motors. The state wants 50 per cent of the land price as compensation for sharecroppers. The Singur farmers were paid 25 per cent. “The law now makes provision for payment of six times the price of a year’s yield,” he said. His department also wants the solatium doubled from 30 per cent. Although the department has “no objection” to the Centre’s proposals for paying land-losers the plots’ “prospective value” — or shares of the industries to be set up — the party and the government are yet to make up their mind. Mollah said: “The bill says the prospective value will be offered only when the land is not used for the original purpose. But we are laying stress on the cancellation of the lease in such cases.” He wants the government to give back 40 per cent of the acquired plot to landlosers after developing it.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee told a rally in North 24-Parganas’ Deganga, where the CPM lost the rural polls, that the industrialisation drive would continue because “we have to provide jobs to educated youths”. “We need jobs, jobs, jobs,” he said.
SINGUR TIMELINE compiled and prepared by Asis Kumar Das, updated on 18 June 2008 (sometimes texts directly have been reproduced from Newspapers, Reports and Articles). It is welcome if anyone share initiative to develop this Timeline. It is also requested to send suggestions, corrections and revisions to asis.kumar.das@gmail.com
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Published: 18 June 2008
Filed under: Movement Timeline | Tagged: Land Acquisition, Land movement, Movement, Singur, Tata Car Factory, West Bengal Government
