Just beside what was meant to be the Nano manufacturing plant, abandoned by the Tatas and now largely reduced to rubble overgrown with wild vegetation, 70-year-old Sheikh Md Ali says his son was forced to migrate to Uttarakhand, where he works as a gold artisan, because of what unfolded here two decades ago.

“I have seen it all. How the Nano factory was proposed and slowly built here. How shops and other businesses began to grow around it. My son trained here and worked as an apprentice for Rs 4,500 a month. Then the agitation started and everything stopped,” says Ali, a resident of Joymollah village and a farmer who received compensation from the then Left government for his land.

The Singur anti-land acquisition agitation that began in 2006, along with that of Nandigram, proved pivotal for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and catapulted Mamata Banerjee to power in 2011.

Though the Supreme Court in 2016 termed the acquisition process illegal and the land was returned amid much fanfare by Chief Minister…