The meeting between the West Bengal government and the Mamata Banerjee-led Opposition in the presence of Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi today appeared to have achieved success with the state accepting the land-for-land formula to break the Singur impasse. However, the two sides have decided to meet again tomorrow or on Monday to thrash out the details.
“The two sides will meet again to go into greater detail of a land-based rehabilitation scheme in and around the Singur project site,” the Governor said at the conclusion of the meeting.
Late in the evening, Mamata Banerjee said from her dharna platform in Singur that it was too early to celebrate, and urged her supporters to come to the venue tomorrow as well.
In Kolkata, the Governor’s legal adviser, retired judge Chittatosh Mukherjee, said land could be handed over to “unwilling” farmers and both sides had to look for a solution as suggested by the Governor.
Trinamool Congress leader Partha Chatterjee said, “We cannot compromise on land but we are making progress.” Trinamool legal head Kalyan Banerjee said he was hopeful of an early solution.
However, according to Debabrata Bandhopadhyay, a retired land records commissioner serving on the Trinamool team, the government was offering too little for any deal to go through.
According to a Trinamool leader, the problem is with the small quantum of land offered by the state, and also the state’s demand that additional land be acquired by the Trinamool-controlled Singur gram panchayat. This could not be confirmed from either Mamata Banerjee or Partha Chatterjee.
The Trinamool leadership says that after antagonizing the local population with its land acquisition process, the Left government is trying to trap Trinamool in the additional land acquisition process. The party won at all levels in the May panchayat elections in Singur, thanks to its opposition to land acquisition from “unwilling” farmers.
The Left Front will meet tomorrow morning to discuss the matter further and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee may meet the Governor.
A source in the Left Front said this deal was a victory as Mamata Banerjee had abandoned her demand for 400 acres. In contrast, a Trinamool leader said, “Even one acre extracted from the government represents a victory for the land losers.”
The government has offered 47 acres held by West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and another 20-odd acres held by the power department inside the factory complex, along with state-held (or ‘khas’) land of 43 acres and another unclaimed 5 acres nearby.
In addition, the state panchayat department has identified farmland nearby. If any “unwilling” farmer wants farmland, the state will finance his purchase.
The land inside the factory complex would house a commercial complex and shops owned by “unwilling” farmers who had lost land to the 997-acre factory complex and had not accepted compensation.
Ironically, the farmer-owned commercial complex was suggested as the solution by the state agricultural marketing department in July 2007 under Naren Chatterjee of the Forward Bloc, but rejected by Bhattacharjee.
