Tata gives Buddha another reason to smile

The official announcement is expected by May 18, when Ratan Tata is scheduled to meet the Chief Minister.

While Tata Motors Managing Director Ravi Kant, who, along with his team, met the CM this morning, continued to hedge saying that West Bengal was still one of the destinations for setting up the project, the Chief Minister told newspersons after the meeting that the decision was final.

Nirupam Sen, minister for industry, said the team would be checking out locations in Uluberia, Dankuni and Shankrail today, as added options besides Guptamani near Kharagpur—that the company had already checked out last month. Tata Motors has also been scouting for locations in Karnataka and Maharashtra. Besides the West Bengal government’s pursuit of the project what has swayed the decision in favour of locating the project in the State is the presence of Tata Steel and Tata Metallics in the vicinity.

With the price tag committed at the stiff Rs 1 lakh level, the pressure is on cost. As Tata Steel is slated to supply the cold-rolled steel for the car body from its Jamshedpur plant and Tata Metallics is to provide the grey iron castings for the chassis, locating here will cut out a lot of logistics cost.

In fact, for the same reason Tata Motors has been pushing for dropping anchor at Guptamani, which will be 15 km from Tata Metallics and 100 km from Jamshedpur.

But the West Bengal government has been pushing for a location closer to Kolkata.

Now that it is coming, the project will doubtlessly go down as an immensely prestigious acquisition for West Bengal and Bhattacharjee and his team has been zealously pursuing it for a while. It will require a site of 7,00-1,000 acres and bring in an investment of Rs 1,000 crore.

Ratan Tata had proposed the ambitious Rs 1-lakh car (as it has come to be known) at the Frankfurt Motorshow in 2003.

Since then all eyes have been trained on the progress of the project and there was perhaps no press conference where Tata had not been quizzed about it.

The Maruti 800, its closest rival which almost drove out the Ambassador and Fiat from the Indian roads to emerge as the country’s largest-selling car, is a 796-cc, three-cylinder car. Currently priced at over Rs 2 lakh, this small car has remained an enigma, selling almost 15,000 units per month.

Ratan Tata talked of a roomier car that would drive the imagination of the Indian middle-class.

He has set himself a deadline of 2007-08 to deliver it.

The Tata car is likely to be powered by a 700 cc, Euro IV compliant petrol version. It will reportedly have a rear wheel-powered engine located at the back.

If and when it happens, it will be Kolkata’s revenge on Maruti.

After all, Hindustan Motors—the makers of Ambassador—is headquartered here at Uttarpara.

–sanchita.das@expressindia.com