Chinese auto firm to look at Singur site

Marxist West Bengal is now looking to Communist China to salvage the damage it suffered because of the pullout of Tata Motors from Singur. The state Government will show the abandoned site of the Tata Motors8217; Nano project of Singur to First Automobile Works FAW, a major automobile manufacturing company of China which has agreed to build an automobile manufactutring factory in West Bengal in collaboration with automobile manufacturer Ural India Ltd. FAW which has presence in 19 countries has collaboration with automobile majors as Toyota, Audi, Mazda and Volkswagon to name a few.

On Tuesday, representatives of the company and Ural India Ltd chairman J K Saraf met Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. 8220;They will be shown places like Kharagpur, Singur and some place in North 24 Parganas district. They may not be taken to Singur this time as the situation there is still volatile. But we will show them that site. They will manufacture minibuses and trucks here,8221; an official told The Indian Express.

FAW is the first company to be shown the abandoned Nano site after the project was pulled out of Singur following violent agitation by the Trinamool Congress. The official said the joint venture company needed 600 acres for its project. Faw, which has 1.31 lakh employees, has a capacity of 20 lakh vehicles every year.

After the meeting, Saraf said they were quite enthusiastic about the proposed project.

8220;We got in touch with FAW for the joint venture and they got back saying they were quite interested. We will take them to places like Kalyani, Kharagpur, Haldia and show sites.8221;

The Government is waiting for communication from the Tatas on when they were going to dismantle the structure in Singur and return the land to the West Bengal Government. None of the ancillary units that were supposed to set up shop at Singur has got in touch with the state Government after Tata Motors chairman Ratan Tata announced their decision to pull out of Singur.