Team spotted 307 vacant acres: Trinamool

Trinamool Congress could restart its agitation in two-three days against Tata Motors’ Nano plant at Singur after meeting the presently out-of-town West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who had brokered a peace between the Trinamool-led agitators at the plant site under Mamata Banerjee and the West Bengal government team of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, industries minister Nirupam Sen and panchayat minister Surjya Kanta Mishra on September 7.

“Our members on the four-member land examination committee identified 307 acres lying untouched and overgrown inside the plot and submitted this in a report. It was to kill this report, and the team set up under the governor’s guidance as part of the September 7 agreement, that the government released the advertisements,” said a top Trinamool leader.

“Our report was based on our belief that tier-I ancillary units could be attached to the Tata mother plant but unimportant ones could easily relocate to vacant land on the other side of the road, which we explained at meetings. Now, we will wait for the governor’s return before restarting out agitation,” the leader added.

Trinamool was upset that the state had unilaterally dissolved the land examination committee through the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC).

“We had also demanded 600 days of wages for landless categories like bargadars and agricultural labourers, which the state reduced to 300 days,” the leader added.

He said Rabindranath Bhattcharjee, the Trinamool MLA from Singur, and Becharam Manna, convenor of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee, had identified the 307 acres as land allocated to unimportant ancillary units and unrelated activities like guest houses when they visited the site for the first time in the last week.

“These revelations upset the government and the advertisements followed, completely violating the agreement the ministers had signed before the governor,” the leader alleged.