Thaindian News

Kolkata, June 24 (IANS) The Hooghly district administration Friday submitted a report to the Calcutta High Court after Tata Motors alleged there was looting and pilferage from its abandoned small car factory in Singur in West Bengal.

Hooghly District Magistrate Sripriya Rangarajan was present in the court of Justice Soumitra Pal to give the report in a sealed envelope. Copies of the document was given to the auto major and the West Bengal government.

On Thursday, Justice Pal had asked for a report on the maintenance of law and order and details of police deployment in the abandoned small car maker plant.

This was after the company’s counsel Samaraditya Pal quoted media reports and presented photographs suggesting pilferage and looting of goods from the factory.

The court Wednesday asked the government to maintain peace at the plant premises after the automobile maker moved a petition challenging the Singur land law, calling it “unconstitutional” and “illegal”.

Meanwhile, continuing his argument for the third day, Pal submitted a supplementary affidavit listing the happenings since the petition was filed challenging the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act passed by the state assembly.

Government pleader Kalyan Banerjee opposed the supplementary affidavit saying it was not legally permissible to improve upon the facts that has already been given in the plaint.

The petitioner cannot keep on changing the facts, he said.

The act, which came into force Tuesday, provides for scrapping the land lease given to the company by the erstwhile Left Front government for the
car plant.

The law vested the land in the government, which evicted the automobile giant from the plant.

The state assembly June 14 passed the bill that was designed to meet the Trinamool Congress’s pre-poll promise of returning 400 acres land to the farmers from whom the Left administration allegedly took it against their will.