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Buddhadeb: we are persuading Tata Motors not to pull out

Staff Reporter

If they pull out Trinamool will be solely responsible

“All I am concerned about is the scope of employment for the youth”
“We don’t need Bush’s friendship”

KOLKATA: “We are trying our best to convince the Tata Motors officials not to pull out of the State, but if the agitation and violence of the Trinamool Congress continues in its present form, Tata Motors may leave soon,” said West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, here on Saturday.

Addressing the 13th All-India Conference of the Student’s Federation of India, the student wing of Communist Party of India (Marxist), here, he said that he had received a letter from Ratan Tata, chairman Tata Group. Rajya Sabha member and CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechuri, was also present .“The Trinamool Congress will be solely responsible if the Tata Motors decide to pullout from the Singur small car project and it will be a betrayal on the part of the Opposition to the people of West Bengal,” Mr. Bhattacharjee said.

The Chief Minister’s remarks came a day after the Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee threatened to resume agitation at the Singur project site if the agreement reached between the government and the Opposition on September 7 was not made operational immediately.

“I am not concerned about the name of the company or the price of the cars they will manufacture, all that I am concerned about is the scope of employment for the youth and the change in the economy of the State that such projects will usher in,” he added.

He pointed out that “it was the willingness of the people of the State, and not any Trinamool Congress resistance, which will decide the fate of the State’s industrialisation process.”

Mr. Bhattacharjee as well as Mr. Yechuri criticised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s remark to the United States President George Bush on Friday that “People of India deeply love you.”

Mr. Yechuri said that two-third of American people were against Mr. Bush and even people of India were against him. “We don’t need Bush’s friendship,” he said.

He said that a third political alternative based on an independent foreign policy, secularism and national unity, and with the CPI(M) at the focal point, was the need of the hour to fight back the imperialistic advances of the U.S., as the Congress and BJP were unable to do so.

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