Calcutta, Oct. 21: Tata Motors chose to have its small-car plant in Singur “on the basis of location and connectivity attributes”, the company’s managing director, Ravi Kant, has said in a letter to Congress legislator Sudip Bandopadhyay.

The MLA had written to Ratan Tata as chairman of the Assembly’s standing committee on commerce and industry, seeking to know whether the Tatas would want to shift to an alternative site in the wake of the controversy over land acquisition in Singur.

But Kant’s letter said: “We chose Singur as the site after having seen several other sites. Our choice was made objectively on the basis of location and connectivity attributes.”

“Our decision to locate the small-car project in West Bengal is a reflection of our great faith in the state and our desire to play a role, however small, in the growth and development of skills and consequential job creation,” the letter said.

The Tata Motors MD also invited Bandopadhyay to the company’s Pune plant to see “concepts and practices of participating in the development of the community where we are located”.

“We believe that we have been responsible corporate citizens wherever we have gone and hope we will make West Bengal proud of having the small-car project at Singur. We believe that we can make a significant contribution to the community around us,” Kant wrote.

Asked about the letter, Bandopadhyay said: “We are not against the Tatas but it would have been better if alternative sites could be found. Their talk about community development sounds interesting.”

The Trinamul Congress is still against the acquisition of the land in Singur. The party has said it would continue its agitation against the takeover of multi-crop land.

Left constituent CPI is also crying foul over what it sees as “lack of transparency’’ in land deals. CPI state secretary Manju Kumar Majumdar told partymen at a meeting today that this would not be tolerated and his party would have to combat “big brother CPM”.

At the district council meeting in North 24-Parganas, Majumdar said only the CPI seems to want to put up a fight against the CPM on Singur. He said his party has questioned the deal between the government and the Tatas while other Front allies were “mute spectators’’.