Chatterjee (in green kurta) at the Tata Hitachi plant in Kharagpur on Friday. Picture by Samir Mondal

Kharagpur, Nov. 8: Things to do on Friday.

Visit the Hitachi plant.

Okay.

Visit the Tata Hitachi plant.

What?

Hitachi owns 60 per cent, Tata owns 40 per cent.

Okay.

Industries minister Partha Chatterjee today visited a Tata Group project in Kharagpur, probably the first time by a Trinamul minister in the party’s 30 months in power.

Chatterjee inaugurated a range of excavators at a plant of the group’s construction equipment manufacturing arm Tata Hitachi, a Rs 600-crore project conceived along with the Tata Nano factory in Singur.

But while a Trinamul-led agitation over land acquisition forced the Tatas to shift the Nano project to Gujarat, the Tata Hitachi venture has had a relatively peaceful journey.

Trinamul’s unease was evident when Chatterjee yesterday sharply reacted to a question on his visit to the Kharagpur plant.

“Yes I will go but it is a Tata Hitachi project, not Tata alone. Hitachi has nearly 60 per cent stake there,” Chatterjee had said.

Tata Motors holds 40 per cent stake in the venture where Japanese major Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM) is the bigger partner.

Today, the minister blamed his “busy schedule” for not being able to visit the plant earlier. “I was unable to visit the project site earlier but that was because of my busy schedule. I had come here earlier and also visited the TIL project nearby. These projects have all come up on WBIDC (West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation) land. What is all the fuss about?” he said.

Sources said that by “here”, Chatterjee could have meant the Vidyasagar Industrial Park, where the Tata Hitachi plant is located on 250 acres.

Multiple sources could not recall the last time a Trinamul minister had visited a Tata Group plant since the Nano project’s exit from Bengal. The party and the group have, however, denied that the relocation had cast a shadow on their relationship.

The Tata Group has challenged in Supreme Court the Mamata Banerjee government’s decision to bring in an act to take back the land acquired for the Nano factory in Singur.

At the Tata Hitachi plant, Chatterjee said he was in favour of more Japanese investment in Bengal, the comments made in the presence of Japan consul-general Mitsuo Kawaguchi. The minister announced an industrial park in nearby Goaltore.

The Tata Group has so far tried to dissociate its other Bengal ventures from the Nano debacle. “I would like to say that the Tatas never left Bengal and we will never leave Bengal,” Cyrus Mistry, the chairman of the $100-billion salt-to-software conglomerate had said earlier this year in Calcutta, toeing the line of his predecessor Ratan Tata.

Mistry was not present at the meeting Mamata held with investors in Mumbai in August.

Chatterjee and his party have maintained that all Tata ventures in Bengal are doing brisk business.

Industry observers termed Chatterjee’s visit to the Tata Hitachi unit a “step in the right direction”.

“I hope the differences are buried soon. That will be a boon for Bengal,” said a Calcutta-based industrialist.