BackJSW Group to return land it bought from farmers in West Bengal
West Bengal administration feels the move will help it defend a controversial law it passed in 2011 to seize a factory in Singur from Tata Motors
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Kolkata: The JSW Group on Monday agreed to return 294 acres it purchased from about 485 farmer families in West Bengal, two weeks after it suspended plans to build a steel and power plant on the acquired land.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee termed the move to return the land at Salboni in West Midnapore district a “unique" gesture. She said she had expected Tata Motors Ltd too to do something similar with its now-abandoned factory site at Singur, to settle its three-and-a-half-year old legal dispute with the state government.
The administration feels the JSW move will help it defend a controversial law it passed in 2011 to seize the Singur factory from Tata Motors. As the legal dispute over the seizure enters the last leg of hearing in the Supreme Court, a section of government officials said the JSW move has made their case stronger. These officials refused to be identified.
Some lawyers, however, said the two cases were unrelated, and the situations were quite different from each other.
The district administration must decide how to restore the land to its original owners. Banerjee had previously asked the JSW Group to pay each of these owners ₹ 5,000 per month as compensation for not being able to create job opportunities for them.
The JSW project stalled in the absence of raw material linkages. Group chairman Sajjan Jindal said in Kolkata two weeks ago that it was impossible to build either a power or a steel plant without assured linkage of at least one key raw material—iron ore or coal.
The group had proposed to invest up to ₹ 35,000 crore in West Bengal, and claims to have so far spent around ₹ 700 crore to acquire and develop the site. It first proposed to build a 10 million tonnes steel plant in phases. When it was unable to secure iron ore for the proposed unit, it said it was exploring options to set up a 600 megawatts power plant.
Biswadip Gupta, the head of the JSW Group’s West Bengal project, said in a text message on Monday that the land is to be returned free to the farmers from whom it was bought.
Apart from the 294 acres bought from farmers, an additional 4,000 acres was leased from the state government. Gupta said the government has agreed that the JSW Group can retain the remainder of its 4,300 acre factory site. Jindal had said previously that the site was attractive and that his group was trying to find ways to utilize it.
Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya, a lawyer and former mayor of Kolkata, said the JSW Group’s project was in no manner hobbled by any state initiative, whereas Tata Motors was forced to leave West Bengal because of vandalism by the Trinamool Congress party, which is now in power.
That apart, the JSW Group had acquired land on its own whereas Tata Motors received the entire plot on lease from the state government, added Bhattacharya, who is also a Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader. Because the JSW Group bought land on its own, it is free to return it, according to him. But land acquired by the state government cannot be returned, he added, defending his case against the controversial 2011 law passed by the Trinamool Congress government after it ended the Left Front’s 34-year rule in West Bengal.
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