NEW DELHI: India’s Tata Motors is planning to manufacture Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) luxury cars at a $1 billion plant that it is planning to build in Tamil Nadu, sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The plan would mark the first time JLR-branded cars would be manufactured from scratch in India.

The cars would be sold domestically and also exported, according to one of the sources, who declined to be identified as the plans were private.

Tata Motors, which acquired JLR in 2008, declined to comment on what it called speculation. It announced plans for the Tamil Nadu plant in March but did not disclose what vehicles would be manufactured there or the plant’s intended production capacity.

In India, where it sells cars such as the Range Rover Evoque, Discovery Sport and Jaguar F-Pace, it is still very much a niche brand. The models sold in India are exported from Britain as fully built vehicles or in parts that are then assembled at a plant near Pune.

It was not immediately clear which JLR models would be built at the factory.