Tata Sons chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran called on chief minister Mamata Banerjee at state secretariat Nabanna on Wednesday afternoon, marking the first in-person interaction between the head of India’s largest business conglomerate and Bengal’s top leadership in 14 years.

Chandrasekaran, who is in his second term as the chairman of the salt-to-software Tata group, was accompanied by Chandrajit Banerjee, director-general of CII, and Manoj Pant, chief secretary of Bengal, during the 45-minute meeting with Banerjee, who will complete her third five-year term in 2026.

Soon after, the All India Trinamool Congress took to social media to announce that CM Banerjee hosted Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons and the Tata group, for a constructive dialogue on Bengal’s industrial growth and emerging opportunities.

“The meeting reflected Bengal’s commitment to fostering meaningful public-private partnerships that drive innovation, investment and inclusive development,” AITC posted on X, adding that, “the conversation centred on deepening the Tata group’s presence in the state.”

The meeting between Banerjee and Chandrasekaran followed a phone call between the two in February when the chief minister informed during the Bengal Global Business Summit that the Tata boss has promised to visit Calcutta ‘soon’.

“I spoke to Mr. Chandrasekaran (of Tata Sons) last night. He was supposed to come here, but could not make it due to some preoccupation,” Banerjee had said at the inauguration of the eighth edition of BGBS.

“He has told me that he would visit Calcutta soon and discuss possibilities of further investments in Bengal,” added Mamata, who later said that the meeting would take place at a mutually convenient time.

She had then asked Chandrasekaran to consider operating a direct flight from Calcutta to Europe, preferably London, by the Tata group-owned Air India, which is now under pressure following the fatal crash of its jetliner in Ahmedabad in June.

Chequered past

The Tata group and Banerjee had a troubled past as she, as an Opposition leader, led the agitation against Tata Motor’s Nano small car plant at Singur over land acquisition. Tata Motors, then led by Ratan Tata, moved out of Bengal in 2008 and set up the factory in Sanand, Gujarat.

While many saw the Tata pullout as a major setback to Bengal’s industrialisation drive, being led by the then chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, it reaped enormous political dividend within three years as Banerjee’s TMC ended the 34-year Left rule in the state in 2011.

Since then, no Tata Sons chairman — Ratan Tata who passed away in 2024 or Cyrus Mistry who was killed in a car crash in 2022 — had ever had a meeting, known to the public, with Banerjee.

Chandrasekaran, however, had previously attended a Bengal business summit as the CEO of TCS, before taking over as the chairman of Tata Sons, the main holding company of the Tata group, in January 2017.

The meeting between Chandra and Banerjee on Wednesday came days after the Bengal government sanctioned the phase 1 building plan for TCS’s second campus in Rajarhat, where a 0.9 million square feet campus would come up, creating 5,000 job opportunities.

TCS is already the largest private sector employer in Bengal, having close to 40,000 people on the rolls. The Tata group also has a presence in the state with Tata Steel, Tata Hitachi and Indian Hotels Company.