Stronger indications of a solution to the land acquisition impasse at the Tata Motors factory complex in Singur emerged today after Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said at Writers’ Building that the suggestions made by West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi for an independent mediator were acceptable.
Meanwhile, Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress (TC) sent a fresh team to meet Gandhi.
The TC team, led by the leader of the opposition in the state Assembly, Partha Chatterjee, reportedly presented documents related to land acquisition and the return of acquired land.
TC was relying on the state’s land acquisition manual, 1991, drafted during Chief Minister Jyoti Basu’s tenure, and a revised set of rules issued in 2006, to prove that land once acquired could be returned if acceptable to all parties, said sources, though Banerjee and Chatterjee were silent on the issue.
The appointment of the mediator, as suggested by the governor on Sunday, was also likely to be finalised soon and Banerjee could send a couple of names to the governor.
Sources said Banerjee was likely to suggest the names of some retired judges or lawyers as mediators, and could even agree to a two-person panel on the issue.
At Singur, about an hour’s drive from Kolkata, work was stalled for the fourth day today, inclusive of the weekly shutdown of Sunday, as Tata Motors did not send its workers to the site stating security concerns.
Workers engaged by a vendor, Tata Ryerson, were reportedly turned back by some groups from the plant gate, said sources.
A TC team was expected to visit the governor again on September 2, though the official reason given for this visit was the need to discuss issues related to the “madrasas” in the state.
Partha Chatterjee had visited the governor on August 31 carrying a response from Banerjee with all the 20-odd alliance partners participating in the Singur protest protest demanding return of land to farmers who had not accepted compensation for land acquired as part of the 997-acre Tata Motors Nano factory and ancillary complex.
At dawn today, in another conciliatory move, Banerjee helped her volunteers open up the Kolkata-bound lane of National Highway 2 , allowing trailer-trucks, cars and other vehicles to proceed to Kolkata.
However, there was a fresh shutdown of NH2 after noon as crowds gathered in pouring rain at a rally of small retailers and shopkeepers to protest the entry of multinational retailers into the domestic retail sector.
Though this was a sensitive topic in Bengal and had seen repeated protests over the last year or so, the issue was one that was backed only by TC and not by other civil rights groups sharing the dais with her, said sources at the Singur protest programme.
Ironically, the Left Front shut down Kolkata from around 12.30 pm today as well, when thousands of Left party workers gathered at Park Circus in central Kolkata to march 7 km to a northern part of the city to protest against imperialism.
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SEPT 1: Let’s talk via mediator, Mamata tells Left Front
