In 2006, the 1000 acre land was acquired by the then West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya govt to facilitate the Tatas to set up its Nano vehicle manufacturing plant.
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After hearing all these SLPs, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice Gopala Gowda and Justice Arun Kumar Mishra had kept the judgment reserved after completing the hearing in May. The acquisition of land by the State for a company does not fall under the purview of public goal, said the Supreme Court. Justice Gowda said agricultural land can be acquired for industrial purposes, but it is better to avoid the use of multi-crop producing land in such cases, according to Economic Times.
October 3, 2008, after a brief meeting with the Chief Minister, Ratan Tata declared his decision to move the Nano Project out of West Bengal.
“The people of Singur suffered so much, they endured so much torture, but they never left me”. The decision by the apex court can be seen as a moral victory for Banerjee as well, who opposed the land acquisition from the start and enjoyed a wave of public sympathy and support for protesting against the atrocities unleashed by the Left Front during those days.
Banerjee had also gone on a 26-day long hunger strike to protest against the land acquisition. Now I can die in peace.
Realising that the land continues to be a sensitive topic, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had raked up the issue during the campaigning of the 2016 Assembly elections.
It also held that even though the land was to be returned, the compensation already paid would not be recovered from the farmers who had lost their livelihood for a period of ten years. A very happy Narendra Modi government in Gujarat took the Nano plant under its wings.
She told people that her government will return the land to the “unwilling Singur farmers”.
After coming to power in 2011, Banerjee passed a law to take over the land and forced Tata Motors to move its project out of the state to Sanad district in Gujarat.
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The Supreme Court observed that land can not be acquired at the instance of a private company.
