West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Friday said the BJP government would bring the Tata Group back in the state, and accused the previous Left and TMC regimes of either forcibly acquiring land or merely indulging in "photo sessions" in the name of industrialisation.
Addressing a press conference in Jolkata, Adhikari promised to revive West Bengal's industrial fortunes and said his government would attract investment and create jobs without repeating the mistakes that had triggered the Singur and Nandigram agitations.
"We will bring back the Tatas in Bengal," the chief minister asserted, referring to the conglomerate whose small-car project at Singur in Hooghly district was shifted to Gujarat in 2008 following a prolonged land acquisition dispute.
In a pointed attack on the opposition TMC, Adhikari alleged that the Mamata Banerjee government spent years making claims about industrial revival without delivering tangible results.
"We don't want to indulge in lies and organise photo sessions like the previous government did to attract industries," he said.
On the contentious issue of land acquisition, Adhikari said the government was working on a policy framework but stressed that industrial growth could not come at the cost of farmers' rights.
"The government is working on its land acquisition policy. We are against forcible land acquisition, like what happened in Singur and Nandigram during the erstwhile Left Front regime. At the same time, we are also against the TMC's policy of doing nothing while only holding photo sessions and spreading lies about bringing industries," he said.
The chief minister said the BJP government would pursue a balanced approach aimed at securing both industrial development and public consent.
The Tata Motors' small car project at Singur remains one of the defining episodes in Bengal's political history. The agitation against land acquisition helped catapult Mamata Banerjee and the TMC to power in 2011, ending the Left Front's 34-year rule.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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