“The state government is offering the land which the Tatas possess. The railways will not proceed further till the government takes back the land from the Tatas,” the minister said at her Kalighat residence on Saturday.

The Left Front government in West Bengal and the railway ministry have been locked in a tug-of-war over Singur ever since Banerjee said in public that her ministry was ready to set up a rail coach factory at the abandoned Nano site if the state government took the land back from the Tatas.

On Friday, Chief Secretary Asok Mohan Chakraborti wrote to Railway Board chairman S S Khurana Banerjee, asking him to visit the site if the railway ministry was

serious about the project. Chakraborti had promised the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation would then act further to take the land back from the Tatas.

Earlier, in reply to Chakraborti’s letter on December 7, Khurana had written back that the railways wanted to know the status of the land, saying it wanted to take over a total of 997.11 acres.

Leader of the Opposition and Trinamool MLA Partha Chatterjee has accused the state government of misleading the railways. “If the land is with the Tatas, how can the state say it will give it away for a coach factory?” asked Chatterjee.

The state government had claimed it was offering Banerjee the land to set up a coach factory following the offer she made through the media. On November 29, while addressing a gathering at Singur, the railway minister had said, “Let the land be with Railways, we will set up a coach factory at Singur.”

Sources in the Trinamool said Banerjee has now realised it will be very difficult for her to return the land to the unwilling farmers, something she had been demanding of the state government.