Moratorium called on land acquired for SEZ by leading citizens

New Delhi, Dec 6 (UNI) Leading citizens today expressed concern at the West Bengal Government's "abject surrender" to the Tata Group's demand to set up a car factory at Singur in Hooghly district and demanded a moratorium on all such land acquisition till a national consensus was evolved.

In a statement here, they said the Tatas' adamant attitude to have the car factory on first class agricultural land at Singur and Singur alone had created a grave situation with the farmers resisting the proposed takeover despite police highhandedness.

Opposing the Centre's policy favouring setting up of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), the statement noted that "large-scale displacement and loss of livelihood was being caused through widespread land acquisition across the country by state governments with the active encouragement of the Centre in the name of promoting development." It further condemned similar expropriation of land by other state governments "in collusion" with business parties in Orissa, Maharashtra, UP, Haryana, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, saying the Centre's policies encouraged such expropriation extinguishing people's livelihoods and conferring exorbitant benefits on big business.

Signatories to the statement included former Lok Sabha Speaker Rabi Ray, former Supreme Court Judge V R Krishna Iyer, former Planning Commission member Rajni Kothari, social activist Aruna Roy and former Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey.

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