Suvendu Adhikari says Bengal in early talks with Ashok Leyland on Singur

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said on Thursday that his government has held preliminary investment talks with Ashok Leyland about Singur, the Hooghly district town that lost Tata's Nano plant in 2008. He made the remark while launching the state's new industrial policy, where he also warned that anyone who blocks a factory will be jailed.

Adhikari said the state would act within 15 minutes of a complaint being registered. On Singur, he said "we will do something there", but he ruled out signing an MoU just for publicity. In a state where announcements have often outpaced projects, that caution may be the more reassuring signal for investors who prefer concrete plans to headlines.

The backdrop explains why the comment matters. In 2006 the then Left Front government invited Tata Motors to build its small car at Singur, with the company citing over 10,000 direct and indirect jobs. Around a thousand acres of fertile farmland were acquired, and protests led by Mamata Banerjee made the site the state's central political battleground. Adhikari rose in that era as a Trinamool leader, notably in the Nandigram movement of 2007. Tata moved the Nano to Sanand, Gujarat, in October 2008.

The aftermath ran for years. The Trinamool government legislated to take the land back in 2011, and in 2016 the Supreme Court cancelled the original acquisition. In 2023 an arbitral tribunal awarded Tata Motors ₹765.78 crore with interest against the state industrial development corporation.

For Ashok Leyland, the Hinduja Group flagship and a major commercial vehicle maker, the logic is plausible. Its manufacturing is concentrated in the south, including light commercial vehicles at Hosur, while it has called Eastern India a key market and opened a fifth LCV dealership in West Bengal in late 2024. A plant near Kolkata would sit closer to eastern customers and ports. Whether the company sees it the same way is what the talks must establish.

The policy offers assistance of up to 120 per cent of eligible investment in plant and machinery, with priority for sectors such as electric vehicles and shipbuilding. The government also plans to fold the 2013 land acquisition law and land pooling into the framework, aiming to avoid both force against farmers and leaving industrialists to assemble land alone.

The big test is land. After the 2016 verdict, Singur's plots are a patchwork, part returned to farmers and part held by the state, so any large project would need careful assembly. For now, the talks are preliminary, and no deal has been announced. If they progress, a revival at Singur would be a powerful symbol for Bengal's industrial comeback pitch.

Source: WION News

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