Bengal's finances in doldrums: Mamata paying the price of freebies

Bad news continues to dog West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose two ministers, two MLAs and numerous party leaders are in CBI and ED custody for alleged involvement in various scams.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

On Monday, automaker Tata Motors informed the stock exchanges that the company had secured an arbitral award of Rs 765.78 crore, plus interest as compensation from the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) on account of the loss of capital investments with regard to the now scrapped Tata Nano manufacturing facility at Singur in West Bengal. Mamata Banerjee had led the agitation which led to the Tatas abandoning the project and transplanting it to Sanand in Gujarat, whose Chief Minister at the time was Narendra Modi.

The company had been building the facility to manufacture the ambitious Tata Nano, but it was forced to scrap the project in the face of protests by the land losers who had united under the banner of Mamata Banerjee's party.

The second whammy revealed came when it was that the Chatterjee Group, led by Bengali NRI Purnendu Chatterjee, too, had won an arbitration award against the Bengal government in a commercial dispute over the failure to pay financial incentives worth Rs 3,285 crore to Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd (HPL).

An arbitral panel comprising three retired Supreme Court judges, including two former Chief Justices of India, ruled in favour of the claimant Essex-a Chatterjee Group company while rejecting the objections raised by the state government. Even though government sources and Trinamool insiders said that the government would file legal challenges against both the awards, which would help it gain breathing time, it has laid bare the precarious state of the finances of the state.