June 8, 2007
Why Would Singur Farmers
Accept Land Elsewhere: Basu
Kolkata
While the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) debates a
possible solution to the Singur land imbroglio, patriarch Jyoti Basu
Friday said there was no reason the farmers displaced by the Tata
Motors project would accept alternative land at far-off places.
"There is not much alternative land available in the area (at Singur).
There are plots in other places but why would they (farmers) go
there," Basu told reporters after the party's state-level meeting
attended by Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and Industry
Minister Nirupam Sen.
However, the veteran leader was hopeful of a solution.
"A solution is possible and Industry Minister Nirupam Sen is working
it out. There are legal points too in the whole exercise," he said.
Basu had held talks with Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee
Monday and assured the firebrand leader of a possibility of
reorganisation of land given to Tata Motors.
However, the party failed to arrive at any solution in Friday's
meeting and sources said the land given to Tata would not be
returned to unwilling farmers at any cost.
Basu said the Nandigram peace initiative was also being discussed
but "it also depends on the other side (Trinamool)".
Earlier, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya had welcomed the meeting between
Basu and Banerjee to pave the way for an all-party peace initiative
on trouble-torn Nandigram.
On May 24, the much-publicised all-party peace talks had collapsed
after an angry walkout by Banerjee over using the word "genocide" in
the draft proposal of the meeting. The CPI-M had refused to term the
March 14 police firing in Nandigram as "genocide".
But the Basu-Mamata talks rekindled hopes of a political consensus
on Nandigram and Singur, with Basu promising Mamata to look into her
arguments on the Tata car factory and Nandigram violence.
Over 997 acres of land in Singur, about 40 km from Kolkata in
Hooghly district, have been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car
project. The issue has triggered a violent face-off between the
government and farmers led by civil society groups and parties like
the Trinamool Congress.
While some farmers committed suicide in Singur, at least 21 people
have been killed, hundreds injured and several women raped in the
continuing violence in Nandigram, about 150 km from here, since
January over possible land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ)
project in collaboration with Indonesia's Salim Group.
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