[1]Two days after arch rival Mamata Banerjee stormed the area, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on Saturday campaigned in this rural belt and charged the Trinamool Congress with blocking industrialisation by misleading the people.
Bhattacharjee said the Left Front government had only tried to make Nandigram a second Haldia, the bustling industrial and port town across the Haldi river, but could not do so as the Trinamool Congress put up hurdles. He was addressing an election meeting at Khejuri near Nandigram East Midnapore district.
Nandigram saw intense and often violent peasant agitation against a proposed chemical hub four years back. "Who made Haldia what it is today? We did. Haldia is no more a village. It is a town. Thousands of people are working there. It will only get bigger," Bhattacharjee told the audience.
"We wanted to set up industries in Nandigram and make it a second Haldia. But due to hurdles put up by the Trinamool that was not possible. They misled the people," he said. The chief minister promised to distribute some surplus land with the government among the poor if the Left Front was voted back to power. He also stressed the need for industries. "There are lot of youngsters now studying. They want jobs. That's the reason we need factories," he said. "They (Trinamool) want to create lawlessness. They want to break the unity and integrity of Bengal. They brought the armed Maoists to Nandigram. Wherever there is unrest Trinamool is behind it," charged Bhattacharjee.
The Nandigram agitation in 2007 against a proposed move to acquire land for the chemical hub was spearheaded by the Trinamool Congress, which forced the government to abort the project. The agitation snowballed into a major protest against the three decade old Left Front rule after 14 protesting villagers were killed in police firing March 14, 2007. It led to huge public anger with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) losing friends even among its staunch supporters.
The Nandigram agitation, running concurrently to the Trinamool led peasant movement in Hooghly district's Singur against the Tata Motors' Nano plant, helped the Trinamool rattle the Left bastions in the 2008 local body polls, the 2009 Lok Sabha elections and also in the civic elections in 2010. At a rally here on Thursday, Banerjee had promised a second revolution — now on the development front — at Nandigram and hinted that she could choose the area for a possible by-poll contest for her if the Trinamool was voted to power. Banerjee is not contesting the ongoing Assembly polls. She said the region would be turned into an industrial hub without grabbing even an inch of agricultural land "by force". Nandigram and other areas of East Midnapore go to polls in the fourth phase of West Bengal elections May 3.
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