Land loss rage: Bengal hamlet boils under calm cover

People have been killed in mass protests against an unwanted infra project in Bhangar

After a day of pitched battle against the state administration and the ensuing standoff which has led to the postponing of land acquisition for a controversial power grid project, Bhangar, 40 km from here, has distanced itself from the world.

Felled logs barricade the asphalt roads, cut in places to trap vehicle wheels. Locals keep a watch for any unknown face. Protest marches are doing the rounds in adjoining villages near the power substation, with the leaders demanding withdrawal of the project and returning the land. Nearly all shops, banks and garages in the area remain closed. The law enforces have pulled back to the local police station.

The protest is around a project of the Power Grid Corporation of India, for which around 13 acres of "multicrop land" was acquired by the public sector undertaking, with a local Trinamool Congress (TMC, the state's ruling party) leader's intervention.

"We had then been forced to sell our land. We were told there will be a power station which will better the electricity availability in the area but now we see it is a power grid. Not only was land acquired for the station but the transmission lines pass through the crop fields, for which no compensation was given," a protestor said.

Trouble had started brewing a year before, when alleged 'Ultra Left and Maoists' penetrated the area and in collaboration with a TMC' faction, started telling people the power station's waste and electricity transmission would ruin both their health and livelihood. Area residents are largely illiterate.

"When we opposed the project, we were assured that it will stop. But, it went on and we had to scale up our protest," said G M Uddin, a leader. Associated with the TMC, he had also led people during the Singur anti-land acquisition movement.

Over the months, things started taking a bitter turn. The protestors said "outsiders" began to pour in and party factionalism in the area scaled up. Police was also brought in. As many as 26 people are said to be missing since the trouble escalated. The latest eruption was after men in police uniform are said to have fired on demonstrators, killing two and injuring one, beside attacking houses at night and beating peoples.

A vandalised state police van in Bhangar (Photo: Subrata Majumder)

"We have found several police uniform -- we don't know if they are the police or outsiders were camouflaged in the uniform. But, the state administration has clearly failed in giving us protection against miscreants," said an angry protestor. Some allege the hand of a TMC faction involved in land deals.

After the killing of two people, state Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had asked Abdur Rezzak Mollah, the area MLA and a CPI-M crossover to the TMC, and her party's vice-president, Mukul Roy, to go to the area and pacify the angry people. This seems to have backfired. "In his address to the people, Mollah has hurt our sentiments by saying indecent things. This is intolerable," Uddin alleged.

The protestors say they now don't want any increase in compensation for the land and the transmission lines across the crop fields but want the project cancelled from here. Banerjee, while assuring the protestors of a solution, has asked the police to comb for the alleged ultra-left "outsiders", while ensuring the villagers are not harassed.

Interestingly, on the day tension broke out, she Tweeted that the power project would not proceed if people don't want it but later pulled off the Tweet. TMC leaders have assured the protestors that the project will get relocated if they don't want it but the people want the CM to say so.

The police, in turn, have their local station into a bastion. While no policemen, numbering in hundreds now, straying outside the station's visible vicinity, there are water cannons and several types of vehicles parked outside, ready to jump into action.