Supreme Court asks Bengal government to return Singur land to farmers

The Supreme Court (SC) has deemed the acquisition of the near-1,000-acre land near Singur in West Bengal, by the then state government for the Tata Nano project as void.

It observed that the acquisition by Tata Motors from the ruling West Bengal government during the time, did not comply with the law. The SC has ordered the state to return the land to farmers in 12 weeks. The apex court said the state government cannot reclaim the amount of compensation given to the land-owners as it had enjoyed the right over the acquired land for 10 years. 

“The case in which the judgement was delivered was related to the acquisition of land by the State Government, before it was leased to Tata Motors. Our case relating to Singur Act of 2011, is yet to be heard by the SC. We will study the judgement in detail before commenting further on the same,” stated a Tata Motors spokesperson to Autocar India.

The ruling was delivered by a bench of Justices V Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra which quashed the land acquisition process invoked by the previous government headed by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. The two judges, who were unanimous in quashing the acquisition process and for retainment of the compensation awarded to the land owners and the cultivators for being deprived of the use of their land for last 10 years, gave their own separate reasonings for arriving at their findings.

There was disagreement between the two judges on two points, with Justice Gowda saying that the land was not acquired for public purpose directly by the Tata Motors and Justice Mishra holding that there was no illegality in the acquisition of land for public purpose as it would have given employment to thousands of people in West Bengal.

It may be recalled that Tata Motors had been leased 997 acres at Singur in Hooghly district, about 40km from Kolkata, by the previous Left Front government for its Nano car project, billed as the cheapest car in the world. Tata Motors’ plant operation in Singur was expected to create employment in excess of 10,000 direct and indirect jobs within the plant, among vendors and service providers in the vicinity. 

Subsequently, the acquisition had seen agitation by cultivators with Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government, then at the forefront of the protests. After the protests and sharp agitation continued for a year, Tata Motors announced its decision to move out from Singur and to set-up a new plant at Sanand in Gujarat. 

With inputs from PTI