Tata Wins Land Appeal, Deals Blow to Mamata Banerjee Tata Motors won a major legal battle Friday with the government of West Bengal after the Calcutta High Court struck down a law that forced the company to return land it had acquired to build an auto plant. The ruling was a setback for Mamata Banerjee, the state's chief minister, who was the force behind the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act in 2011. Tata Motors, part of Tata Group, the largest conglomerate in India, took on lease 997 acres of land near Kolkata in 2007 with the support of the state's communist government, which wanted the Nano, billed as the world's cheapest car, to be produced in the West Bengal. Out of the 10,000 farmers who owned the land, about 2,000 refused the government's purchase offers for their nearly 400 acres. Ms. Banerjee took up the cause of the holdouts and held several public protests in 2007 and 2008. In 2008, when the plant was almost ready to produce the car, the public agitation became so intense that Tata, citing the uncertain security situation, shelved the project. Tata then accepted an offer by Narendra Modi, Gujarat's chief minister, to relocate the plant to Gujarat, which is where the Nano is presently produced. Passage of the Singur land law, which required Tata Motors to forfeit the land to the farmers who had been forced to sell, was among Ms. Banerjee's signature triumphs after coming to power in May 2011, when she defeated a communist government that had ruled for 34 years in West Bengal, one of the least industrialized states in India. On Friday, the Calcutta High Court declared the law unconstitutional and invalid. The high court's ruling reverses an earlier one by a single high court judge who had upheld the law. Kalyan Banerjee, a lawyer representing the state government, promised another appeal. "The state will prefer an appeal to the Supreme Court," he said. With a single bench we won, and with a division bench they won. Now it is one to one. Let us see what happens in the final. Bikash Bhattacharya, a lawyer representing the farmers who accepted the government's purchase offer, hailed the high court's decision. "The law is constitutionally invalid because it needs assent by the president of India, which was not taken," he said. Nirupam Sen, who arranged the land deal with Tata as the industry minister for the communist government, said the law reclaiming the land from the company was clearly unconstitutional. "This has tarnished the image of West Bengal," he said. The government has a role in acquiring land for industrialization. Ms. Banerjee wrote on her official Facebook page after the ruling: "I have no comments to offer on Singur verdict. Throughout my life, I have struggled for the cause of the farmers, working class, poor and underprivileged.