15 June,2011 07:25 AM IST | | Agencies
Amidst a heated exchange of words and a walkout by Opposition members, the West Bengal Assembly yesterday passed a bill scrapping the previous Left Front government's deal with Tata Motors to facilitate the return of land to 'unwilling' farmers in Singur, fulfilling one of Mamata Banerjee's key election pledges.
The return of 400 acres of land at Singuru00a0 was one of the key poll planks for Mamata Banerjee
The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill, 2011, enables the government to return land to farmers who had unwillingly parted with their land and also did not accept compensation.
The bill vested the entire 997.17 acre of acquired land at Singur for the now abandoned Nano project in West Bengal along with the existing structure with the state government.
Bone of contention
The government will return 400 acres of land to "unwilling" farmers and the remaining portion will be utilised for socio-economic development, employment generation, industry and other public purposes.
The Bill, piloted by Minister for Industries and Commerce Partha Chatterjee, was passed by voice vote in the absence of the Left Front legislators after Speaker Biman Bandhopadhyay declined to admit a point of order raised by Leader of the Opposition Suryakanta Mishra.
When the Bill was put to vote, the Left MLAs, who cited legal loopholes in the legislation, walked out of the House. The debate on the bill was punctuated by occasional angry exchanges between the Treasury and Opposition benches.
Mishra, who belongs to the CPI(M), raised the point of order saying Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, during her speech in the debate, did not reply to the legal issues raised by him in relation to the Bill.
Participating in the two-hour discussion on the Bill, the chief minister said it had been tabled to "undo the injustice" meted out to the people. She said her government did not want to drive a wedge between 'willing' and 'unwilling' farmers but the situation forced it to resort to it.
Banerjee said the names of the willing farmers had not been recorded. Meanwhile, the Tatas said they were studying the Bill. "We are studying the Singur Bill which was passed today," a spokesman of the Tata Group said yesterday.
