Click to play videoNew Delhi: Tata Motors on Sunday said it has started construction of its small car plant in Singur after due approval from the West Bengal government.
The civil construction for the plant is being initiated by Tata Motors with the consent of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), the company said in a statement.
The company through its contractors and sub-contractors will deploy people from the Singur area on various unskilled jobs, it said.
Tata Motors officials performed a puja at the construction site in the presence of state government officials for the Rs 1,000 crore project.
Tata Motors said that 700 acres of land will be used for the factory and manpower has been mobilised for the construction.
Group Chairman Ratan Tata's dream "people's car" is expected to roll out by next year.
Ratan Tata had announced last month that the group would not pull out of the state while blaming corporate rivals for fuelling the controversy.
Immediately after the construction work started, a Tata Spokesperson from Mumbai told PTI, "The small car will be launched as planned in the calendar year 2008 and already a number of vendors for the project have been identified."
Caught unawares spokesperson of Trinamool Congress Partho Chaterjee, whose leader Mamata Banerjee spearheaded the agitation and went on a prolonged hunger strike, said, "This cannot be done keeping in mind the prohibitory orders enforced. This shows that the project does not have the peoples' support."
Expressing shock at the manner in which construction work for the project began, Mamata Banerjee accused the Left Front government of deceiving her and said the people would not forgive the state government and Tata Motors for their "audacity".
Banerjee, who was discharged from nursing home last week, told PTI, "I am not well, I'm still under treatment. The way construction work started surreptitiously for the Tata project shocked me and hurt me deeply."
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