The Metro Cash & Carry store off EM Bypass. Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Calcutta, Sept. 18: German wholesaler Metro Cash & Carry today said it was “evaluating our options” after political opposition continued to freeze its Calcutta launch, issuing what a state minister admitted was a veiled pullout threat.

Metro’s 100,000sqft store off EM Bypass is complete but the company has been waiting for an agri-product marketing licence from a board run by a Left Front partner. It has missed one deadline after another and watched its latest target of a Puja launch go haywire.

The company’s statement comes weeks after Tata Motors, its Singur project stalled by political opposition ahead of the Nano’s October launch, had spoken of a possible pullout.

Sunderbans affairs minister Kanti Ganguly said: “Metro authorities contacted me and said a failure to get the licence would force them to pack up and leave. A German team of the company is coming in a week to make a spot assessment and decide whether to pull out.”

That will be terrible news for Subhajit Mukherjee and his 350 colleagues at the store, whose frustration grows daily as they wait for operations to start and worry if they would soon be out of a job.

Mukherjee, a department manager, will have a 10-day break this Puja — his first since his college days — but wishes he hadn’t. “I don’t want to sit at home like my little daughter who has a long Puja vacation. I have never done it in my seven-year professional career. It’s not amusing,” he said.

“I came back to Calcutta last December to live with my family and work here. I never imagined we would face something like this,” said Kaushik Chatterjee, a floor manager. He is asking himself if his decision to return was the right one.

Subhobrata Bal, who is in charge of the store, said the hardest part of his job was to face the anxious employees who report for work every day.

Apart from 80 managers, the store has about 270 young “associates”. Most are in their first job and had been recruited earlier this year when a June-July launch had seemed possible.

“Every day they ask, ‘when will the store open?’ I have no answer,” Bal said.

The young associates go to the markets every day, register traders as possible clients and enter the data on the store’s network. They include a few special persons like Mithun Das and Pankaj Sarkar, who cannot hear or speak.

The company has generated enthusiasm in the locality, and many turn up to enquire about job opportunities. With worries mounting over the existing jobs, the store has put up a “no vacancy” board.

Arunava Kol, head of Metro corporate relations here, said he had knocked on all the doors of the government for a fresh licence. “No one has said no. They say it is being considered. But nothing is happening.”

Unlike Singur, where the Opposition Trinamul Congress has been the hurdle for the Nano plant, the spoilsport for Metro is Left Front partner Forward Bloc, which runs the agri-marketing board.

The Bloc is running a campaign against big companies entering retail, especially Reliance. It is opposed to Metro’s launch in Bengal, although it is a wholesaler, on the ground that it is an MNC.

The company statement said the board had granted Metro — the first foreign wholesaler to invest in the country — a licence in 2005 and renewed it in 2006 and 2007.

But in June 2007 the board had “unilaterally” withdrawn the licence, valid till March 2008. The company, which has invested Rs 140 crore in its Bengal project, applied for a fresh licence in March this year and has since then been waiting.

The statement confirms The Telegraph report on August 9 that Metro had received the licence but it was killed off by the marketing board.

“Metro Cash & Carry invested in… Bengal at the invitation of the state government. We are currently evaluating our options…” the statement said.

CPM minister Ganguly, who is influential in the neighbourhood of the store, said: “Today I discussed the matter with Naren De (the agriculture minister from the Forward Bloc who is now temporarily in charge of the government’s agri-marketing department too). I have also informed chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and industries minister Nirupam Sen.”

Bhattacharjee has asked senior officials to look into the matter, sources said.

Naren De said: “I have asked my department officials to find out what exactly has happened about the licence renewal. They will submit a report shortly.”

However, the authority for issuing the licence is not the agri-marketing department but the agri-marketing board, headed by De’s Bloc colleague Naren Chatterjee.

Metro, which will need two months to start operations after it receives the licence – if at all -- will not only miss the Puja sales but Diwali too.

The large store with multi-level racks and glow signs hopes to sell thousands of food and non-food items to institutional customers and small traders.

It was to be Metro’s second store in India, after Bangalore, but amid the serial delays the company has now opened establishments in Hyderabad and Mumbai too.

With inputs from Anindya Sengupta