On 30th October (Monday), Tata Motors secured an arbitral award of ₹766 crores plus interest as compensation for its investment in the now-scrapped Nano plant in Singur, West Bengal. In a regulatory filing, the Mumbai-based auto major announced that it has won the Singur automobile manufacturing facility case against West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC). It added that it has been awarded a compensation of Rs 766 crore plus interest for its losses incurred in the Singur plant.
Singur Plant case | Tata Motors says, "The aforesaid pending arbitral proceedings before a three-member Arbitral Tribunal has now been finally disposed of by a unanimous award in favour of Tata Motors Limited (TML) whereby the claimant (TML) has been held to be entitled to… pic.twitter.com/ivr34191GM
— ANI (@ANI) October 30, 2023
The auto giant revealed that the pending arbitral proceedings before a three-member Arbitral Tribunal have been finally disposed of by a unanimous award in favour of Tata Motors. As per the arbitral award, it will recover more than Rs 765 crores with interest from the WBIDC for the losses it incurred in the now-defunct Singur plant.
In an exchange filing, Tata Motors said, “The aforesaid pending arbitral proceedings before a three-member Arbitral Tribunal has now been finally disposed of by a unanimous award in favour of Tata Motors Limited (TML) whereby the claimant (TML) has been held to be entitled to recover from the respondent (WBIDC) a sum of Rs.765.78 crores with interest thereon @ 11% p.a. from 1st September 2016, till actual recovery thereof.”
It added, “The Claimant (TML) has also been held to be entitled to recover from the respondent (WBIDC) a sum of Rs.1 crore towards the cost of the proceedings.”
The case pertains to Tata Motors’ claim for compensation from WBIDC. This claim covered various aspects, including the loss of capital investments, related to the Singur automobile manufacturing facility which had to be shifted after stiff protest by the then opposition leader Mamata Banerjee.
Back in 2006, the erstwhile Left Front government in Bengal had acquired around 1,000 acres of land in Singur and Hooghly. Subsequently, it handed it over to Tata Motors for the purpose of building a Tata Nano manufacturing facility for job creation in the state.
However, the land acquisition was opposed by the then opposition leader and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, the current Chief Minister of West Bengal. As a result, Tata Motors had to shelve the Singur project but by then it had already invested over Rs 1,000 crore in the Singur plant.
The automobile major later shifted to Gujarat and set up a plant in Sanand for manufacturing the Tata Nano. Tata Motors inaugurated a new plant to manufacture its Nano cars in Sanand in June 2010 almost two years after it was forced to shift the plant out of West Bengal because of Mamata Banerjee-led protest against the land acquisition.
The Tata Nano’s Sanand plant was inaugurated by the then-Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi along with Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata.
