Nearly two decades after Singur reshaped West Bengal’s politics and lifted Mamata Banerjee to power, the same stretch of farmland is back in the spotlight, this time as a weapon against her. With the 2026 Assembly elections approaching, the BJP is attempting a political reversal, using Singur to argue that Banerjee’s biggest victory also became Bengal’s biggest industrial loss.
Singur Returns To Centre Stage
In 2008, Mamata Banerjee walked the fields of Singur, led protests, and staged a hunger strike against the Left Front government’s acquisition of fertile farmland for the Tata Nano project. The agitation forced Tata Motors to pull out of West Bengal and move the factory to Sanand in Gujarat, a decision that altered Bengal’s political future.
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Eighteen years later, Singur is once again a political battleground. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address a rally on January 18 at Singher Bheri mouza, land once marked for the Nano plant. The BJP is framing Singur not as a farmers’ movement, but as a missed chance for industrial growth.
The party has promised to “bring Tata back to Singur” if it comes to power in the 2026 Assembly elections, according to PTI.
A Landscape Frozen In Time
Since Tata Motors exited Singur, large parts of the nearly 1,000 acres acquired for the project have remained unused. According to The Telegraph, much of the land lies bush-covered and uncultivable, with only around 300 acres restored for farming. Abandoned concrete structures and incomplete infrastructure continue to dominate the area. The BJP has seized upon this image of stagnation to reinforce its message that Singur symbolises what Bengal lost after industry fled the state.
How Singur Became A Political Flashpoint
The Singur controversy began in 2006 when the then Left Front government, led by Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, signed an agreement with the Tata Group to manufacture the Nano car. Nearly 1,000 acres of multi-crop agricultural land in the Hooghly district were acquired for the project.
Resistance from farmers soon followed. Mamata Banerjee, then in opposition, turned the local dispute into a statewide movement against what she called forced land acquisition. The protests included police action, arrests, and Banerjee’s 21-day hunger strike in Kolkata.
By 2008, amid rising unrest, Tata Motors withdrew from Singur and shifted the project to Gujarat. Narendra Modi, then Gujarat’s chief minister, famously welcomed the move with a one-word message to Ratan Tata.
“When Ratan Tata said in a press conference in Kolkata that they were leaving West Bengal, I sent him a short SMS saying ‘welcome’. And now you can see what a Re 1 (worth) SMS can do,” Modi said while inaugurating the Nano plant in Sanand in 2010.
Singur And Mamata’s Political Ascent
The Singur agitation, along with the movement in Nandigram, became the foundation of Mamata Banerjee’s rise. In 2011, she ended the Left Front’s 34-year rule in West Bengal.
The Trinamool Congress later received legal backing when the Supreme Court ordered the return of land to unwilling farmers, ruling that the acquisition was illegal. The party continues to cite the verdict as proof that Singur was about farmers’ rights, not industrial failure.
BJP’s Attempt To Rewrite Story
The BJP is now trying to overturn that narrative. Party leaders argue that Singur marked the beginning of Bengal’s industrial decline and scared away investors.
Calling Singur a symbol of “lost opportunity”, Union minister and state BJP president Sukanta Majumdar said, “Industrialisation left Bengal the day Tata was forced to leave. Prime Minister Modi is coming now, and in the future, Tata will also return. But for that, Bengal needs a change of government.”
A senior BJP leader told The Telegraph that Modi would speak on industrialisation “from Singur, from where the Tatas were forced to leave because of Mamata Banerjee”.
Another BJP source said farmers who once supported Banerjee’s movement have been invited to the January 18 rally.
Those Singur farmers “who now want industries in Singur would be seated in the front rows at the rally”.
Invoking Ratan Tata’s legacy, Majumdar described the Nano project’s exit as a “stigma” and promised major industrial investments if the BJP wins power, PTI reported.
TMC Pushes Back
The Trinamool Congress has rejected the BJP’s campaign as selective memory. Party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh accused the BJP of ignoring the realities of the farmers’ struggle.
“These are old CPI(M) faces who have now joined the BJP. They did not go to the villages where people actually fought the land battle,” Ghosh said.
State minister Chandrima Bhattacharya pointed to the Supreme Court verdict.
“The highest court said land acquisition in Singur was wrong. Where were these leaders when farmers were beaten, and land was forcibly taken?” she asked.
A Symbol Reclaimed, A Battle Renewed
In Singur itself, reactions are divided. Some residents hope renewed attention will finally bring jobs and development. Others remain wary after years of political promises.
For the BJP, Singur is the opening move in its 2026 campaign, a symbol it believes can mark the beginning of the end for the TMC. For Mamata Banerjee, it is both a reminder of the struggle that built her power and a warning that the ground beneath her politics is being contested once again.
Singur, the land that once made Mamata Banerjee, is now being used to challenge her, and that is why this familiar field has once again become West Bengal’s fiercest political battlefield.
