Mamata ends stir, farmers to get land

  • 07/09/2008

  • Business Standard (New Delhi)

BREAKTHROUGH IN SINGUR Bs Reporter / Kolkata September 08, 2008, 0:19 IST Trinamool Congress (TC) leader Mamata Banerjee agreed to end her two-week-long protest in front of the Tata Motors Nano factory complex at Singur after the West Bengal government agreed to give farmers who had refused compensation land inside the 997-acre factory complex in return for what they had lost to the project. The state government will also finance the purchase of this land. A four-member committee will be constituted under the chairmanship of Rabindranath Bhattacharya, TC MLA from Singur, to examine the issue and submit its report in a week. The government, in turn, will request vendors to stop work for the week. Officials from Tata Motors, which had suspended work at Singur owing to the protests, are likely to meet the government tomorrow. The deal, which was mediated by West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, achieved the impossible by getting Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to meet Banerjee for the first time ever in the Raj Bhavan to end the impasse over Singur. The governor, flanked by TC and government teams, including Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, announced,