BHEL may have power venture at Nano's Singur site

There is a flicker of hope for Tata Motors' abandoned Singur site. A team from government-owned Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) visited the place, along with state government officials, for a possible project with the West Bengal Power Development Corporation.

BHEL general manager S C Mittal was accompanied by WBPDC managing director Debashis Sen. The team also met Tata Motors representatives at the site.

Sen refused to divulge details and said, "We just visited the site." However, state government sources said a report on the possible project was likely to be given over the next three weeks.

State power minister Mrinal Banerjee said two projects were being considered, a power equipment unit  and a super-thermal power plant of 2x800 Mw. "Singur is one of the sites being explored for the project," he said.

The land requirement for the project is not known. Close to a year ago, Tata Motors pulled out its Nano project from Singur after an indefinite protest led by Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee, now Union railway minister.

Banerjee's main demand was return of 400 acres to unwilling land-losers, though the state government put the figure at 181 acres.

On his last visit to Kolkata in September, Tata Motors' chairman Ratan Tata had said he would not stand in the way of any development that might take place on the land. He indicated he would return the land if compensated.

"We left behind a fair amount of investment in the land and in sheds, infrastructure, and so on, for which we would like to be compensated," Tata had said at the press conference he jointly addressed in Kolkata with West Bengal's commerce and industry minister, Nirupam Sen.

Tata Motors has renewed the lease for the year and so have most of the vendors who had invested for the Nano project. The mother plant was to have spread over 650 acres and the vendor park accounted for 290 acres.

However, the railway minister recently said she had requested the central government to allow the railways to set up a wagon factory on the undisputed portion of the land.

Her party leader and head of the Opposition in the West Bengal legislative assembly, Partha Chatterjee, said: "BHEL is a public sector company, so it is alright. But they will have to return 400 acres."