Apex court order good for farmers, says Mamata

“We welcome the verdict. It will help the farmers of Singur in getting their land back,”  Mamata said.

The Tatas, according to her, had filed the case keeping in mind three motives — to declare the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act unconstitutional, a stay on the implementation of the Act and stopping land measurement and distribution process.

The apex court did not entertain all of them and only distribution of land among the farmers has been stayed by the court for a month. The land identification and measurement in Singur which has been underway would continue as the Supreme Court did not put any stay on process, she asserted.

Referring to the court’s injunction on the land distribution, Mamata maintained that the government had earmarked a time frame of 30 days in its notification to complete the land distribution process.

The previous Left Front government had not given any such time frame to the farmers in Singur when the lands were acquired from them, she said. However, Mamata declined to speak about the token return of 11.5 acres of some farmers.

The Singur high-power panel which set up by the state government returned the 11.5 acres of substitute land to some unwilling farmers of Gopalnagar and Kolaypara, sources quoting Manik Das, a zilla parishad member from Beraberi, said. “We have returned the same quantum of land among the unwilling landowners that they had owned.”

The farmers were given substitute land in Gopalnagar and Kolaypara where their original holdings were.