Tata Motors extends Singur land lease for another year
05 Apr 2010
Tata Motors has paid Rs1 crore lease rent for the disputed land at Singur, West Bengal, which will take its lease period till end-March 2011.
Protest by land owners backed by political parties led by Mamata Banerjee's Tinamool Congress had forced closure of Tata's facility for the company's small car 'Nano' and a shift in the location to Sanad in Gujarat.
Officials of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) said the company paid the advance annual lease rent of Rs1 crore for the year 2010-11 last month.
Tata Motors intend to keep the leased land at Singur although the `Nano' project has long been shifted out of West Bengal to Sanad in Gujarat.
The Nano, however, is currently being manufactured at its makeshift plant in Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and its roll-out from the Sanad plant is expected on 1 May, coinciding the golden jubilee of Gujarat.
The Sanand plant, which has a capacity to manufacture 5,00,000 Nanos a year, will roll out 2,50,000 cars in the initial phase.
The West Bengal government had asked the Tat group to return the land after Mamata Banerjee proposed to set up a Railway project there as an alternative.
Tata group chairman Ratan Tata has, however, demanded that the company be compensated for its investment losses if it is to return the land.