Tata Nano motors violated agreement and broke trust: Cong

Gandhinagar, March 17 (IANS) The opposition Congress on Thursday alleged that Tata Nano plant in Sanand, Gujarat, violated the terms of the agreement with the Gujarat government and broke the trust of the people. The Congress in the Assembly said that despite violation of agreement of manufacturing a certain number of cars, the state government instead of recovering the loan, supported the company.The Congress legislator from Anand, Kanti Sodha Parmar asked the government what were the conditions of the agreement with Tata motors and what benefits were provided to the company. Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, who also holds the industries portfolio, replied that Tata Nano motors was provided loan as per Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and the Gujarat government had carried out a State Support Agreement on October 7, 2008 and a Loan Agreement on March 3, 2013.According to the provisions of a 2009 Government Resolution (GR), a loan for a period of 20 years was provided at nominal interest rate of 0.1 per cent of the VAT and CGST paid by the company to the government. A special committee was setup to monitor the requisite permissions to expedite the project and a loan of Rs 587.08 crore was provided.While asking a sub question, Congress whip and legislator from Gandhinagar, C.J. Chavda said, "Tata has violated the agreement with the government, this means that they have breached the trust of people of Gujarat. If the company has violated the conditions of agreement it should be punished and loans should be recovered."Pointing out to another question raised in the questionnaire, the lawmaker from Una, Punja Vansh said, "The government had specified certain mandatory conditions with the Tata motors that they will set up a plant with a capacity to manufacture approximately 2,50,000 Nano cars per annum and persuant to TML phased investment, which could be expanded to 3,50,000 Nano cars and 5,00,000 Nano cars per annum. But what steps were taken if the company did not manufacture stipulated number of cars? We also want to know that how many Nano cars were manufactured in phase 1 and per annum?Replying to that the Minister only said, "Till date the company manufactured a total of 2.60 lakh Nano cars since its inception."
--IANS amc/skp/

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