The Nano pullout has cost Singur dear. The property prices in the area have fallen steeply. Says a land broker, “I, along with some of my friends, had bought the land after the Tatas started setting up the factory. We thought that we would make a kill, because companies from various parts of the country kept calling us, offering three times the existing rates. We chose to hold on to the plot expecting land prices to rise further. We never thought that the Tatas would pull out of Singur especially when the construction work was nearing completion,” Ghosh said. The price of the plot has gone down to Rs 20,000 per cottah, which amounts to Rs 12 lakh an acre — the initial offer by the government for double-crop land.
Kushal Saha, former pradhan of the Trinamool Congress-run Beraberi gram panchayat, states, “We have land in this area, adjoining the Tata compound. At one point of time, brokers offered me Rs 5 lakh a cottah. But now, they have stopped coming to my house,” said Saha. Landowners near the 997-acre Tata compound have all come to realise what they lost. Many companies were buying land in Singur and land prices in the area reached Rs 24 lakh an acre. “…The high price was coming in the way of the second phase of investment. Companies from Mumbai and even abroad such as Indonesia put off their projects because of the abnormal price,” a Kolkata based real estate broker said.
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