Opposition leaders on Monday rejected a fresh offer of talks from the head of India's West Bengal state and vowed to continue protests against a plant where the world's cheapest car is being built.
The head of opposition Trinamool Congress Mamata Banerjee, who launched an “indefinite” protest Sunday at the Tata Motors plant, said no talks would take place until hundred of acres of factory land were returned to villagers.
“Unless the government returns the land to the farmers there is no question of opening a dialogue,” Banerjee told reporters after receiving an invitation Monday to meet from West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
“Our agitation will be intensified if the government does not consider our demand.”
Bhattacharjee had expressed hope earlier Monday that the issue could be resolved.
“I've sent a letter to Mamata Banerjee asking her to end the protests and I hope we will be able to resolve the issue through talks,” Bhattacharjee, whose Marxist government wooed the project, told reporters in the state capital.
The call for talks came after Ratan Tata, chairman of the conglomerate that owns the plant, warned he would move it out of the state if protests continued. His company has already invested 350 million dollars in the project.
But the opposition leader's response dimmed prospects that the siege at the Tata plant would quickly end.
Bhattacharjee has already rejected the protesters' demand that 400 acres (161 hectares) of factory land be given back to farmers from whom it was forcibly taken.
Demonstrators blocked roads near the factory at Singur, 35 kilometres (20 miles) northwest of Kolkata for a second day as riot police protected the factory premises.
Police estimated the number of protesters at 2,000, far below the 40,000 who turned out Sunday when the Trinamool Congress launched its demonstration against the factory constructing the 2,500-dollar Nano car.
The government acquired 997 acres of land for the project, but activists insist the project needs only about 600 acres.
The gates of the factory have been heavily fortified, with an October deadline for the first Nano car to roll off the assembly line appearing in jeopardy.
K.N. Kammkar, a police inspector on duty, said: “We are spending sleepless nights to guard the plant.”
The Trinamool chief has proposed that low-lying land near the plant could be given to Tata for ancillary production units rather than using the farmers' fields.
