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India's Tata Motors threatened to pull production of the world's cheapest car from the Marxist-ruled West Bengal state if violent protests continue against the plant.
People will have to decide 'whether we will be a wanted or an
unwanted resident or a good corporate citizen', Tata Group chairman
Ratan Tata told reporters in the state capital Kolkata.
If the protests do not end at the Singur plant, 'we will very reluctantly need to move,' Mr Tata told reporters following the Tata Motors annual meeting.
"The move will be at great cost to Tata Motors and to shareholders (but) there is a concern about our people, a definite concern about not being wanted," he said, adding there was also a worry about employee safety.
The Nano, which Mr Tata conceived with the aim of getting Indians off their motorcycles and into safer cars, was unveiled with huge fanfare early this year at India's premier automobile show in New Delhi.
But since the sporty four-door, five-seater with its 623-cc engine was shown to industry acclaim, its ride has been anything but smooth.
There have been frequent, often violent, protests by activists angered by the state government's acquisition of farmland for the project. There has also been strong political opposition.
The walls of the plant are plastered with warnings to workers to leave or 'face the consequences'.
Despite the protests, Mr Tata said the company hoped to have the Nano in showrooms by October, its target launch, or 'close to October'.
The plant is slated to initially produce 250,000 Nanos annually.
The Singur Land Protection Committee protesters said earlier the group was 'not against industry' and wanted the factory.
But the group is angered at how land for the plant was taken by the state government and wants it to return 400 acres (161 hectares) of 997 acres seized from farmers who did not want compensation and wanted to remain on their property.
The company, India's top vehicle maker, has said it could have built the Nano plant in other parts of the country with better infrastructure but wanted to develop poverty-hit and
under-industrialised West Bengal 'as our gift'.
"We have not come to exploit the people of West Bengal," Mr Tata said.
Tata company officials met state government representatives in Kolkata last Thursday to voice concern about the protests.
