West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s ordinance faux pas may have given the beleagured Opposition CPI(M) a stick to beat the fledgling Trinamul Congress government with, but the Congress-led UPA stood solidly behind her. Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee lauded Ms Banerjee’s initiative to return the 400 acres of Singur land to the unwilling farmers. When the newsmen sought his reaction to the state government’s decision to first announce the signing of the ordinance by the governor and then its failure to notify it, Mr Mukherjee asked: “So what?”
He, in fact, praised the chief minister’s plan to table the Land Acquisition (West Bengal Amendment) Bill 2011 in the Assembly to reclaim the land from Tata Motors’ abandoned project site in Singur. “It is a good decision. On June 13, the session of Assembly begins and then the Article through which land was acquired will be amended,” he added.
The Congress may have backed the chief minister but the CPI(M) was in an unforgiving mood. “ It is clear that Ms Banerjee is in a terrible hurry and in her eagerness to fast track her poll promises, she is committing mistakes after mistakes,” CPI(M) central committee member Mohammad Salim, who was in Hyderabad to attend the party’s central committee meeting, said over the phone.