India's Tata group was moving out of an unfinished factory built to make the world's cheapest car due to protests over a land dispute, reports said Wednesday. Tata was moving equipment from the plant in Singur in West Bengal to an unspecified facility following a deadlock in talks between state authorities and the protesters, the Press Trust of India reported.
A Tata Motors spokesman declined to comment, but state police confirmed that laden trucks were seen leaving the plant near Kolkata, capital of the Marxist-ruled state. Tata has ploughed 350 million dollars into the factory, but it cannot complete the project and begin production due to violent protests by the state opposition party and farmers who say their land was stolen.
Efforts to resolve the stand-off failed again Wednesday as protest leaders left a compromise meeting with the state's governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, officials said. Tata Motors had said it hoped to launch the four-door Nano in October in time for the big-spending Hindu festival season. The company wants to sell the car for 100,000 rupees (2,150 dollars). Shifting the Singur plant would delay any mass roll-out for months.
Prakash Karat, chief of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, which governs West Bengal, was concerned about the ongoing stand-off. "We are worried over the persisting protests against the Nano plant and we fear Tata Motors will leave Singur if a conducive atmosphere is not immediately restored," Karat told reporters in Kolkata on Wednesday.
Trade lobbies say the departure of Tata from Singur could damage the economic revival of West Bengal, which in the past has seen a flight of capital in the face of nagging industrial unrest.