Buddha govt for consensus on land acquisition

KOLKATA: The West Bengal government will convene an all-party meeting to remove confusion among opposition parties over acquisition of land at Singur for the Tata Motors small car manufacturing unit. The CPM state secretariat, which met at the party headquarters on Alimuddin Street on Friday morning, discussed at length the dissension among opposition parties over the Singur land issue. It finally gave a green signal to chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee about calling all political parties to defuse the resentment among them.

Commerce and industry minister Nirupam Sen, also an important functionary of the state secretariat, told newspersons after the meeting that the chief minister will soon convene the meeting of all the political parties to clear the government’s view about the issue and also to hear the grievances among the opposition parties. It is learnt that the chief minister will call the meeting after the pujas which will be attended by senior ministers of his cabinet including Mr Sen, finance minister Dr Asim Dasgupta and agriculture minister Mr Naren De.

“We have no objection in holding the all-party meeting to remove confusion and doubts prevailing among the opposition parties. I am confident that all the political parties would agree with the way the government is acquiring land at Singur,” Mr Sen told newspersons.

Mr Sen also said that the Tatas were coming here with a good intention of setting up their unit and “I feel no one should have any resentment over the Tata’s decision”.

The minister also ruled out the allegation by the opposition parties that the government had acquired multi-crop land at Singur. “There are some one or two-crop lands at Singur which the government had to acquire. But we have not taken any land which produce three or four crops at Singur,” Mr Sen added. The Congress in West Bengal had been demanding an all-party meeting on the Singur land acquisition issue.

Meanwhile, distribution of cheques among the farmers and other land losers at Singur remained suspended following the pujas. More than 1,000 farmers had already got the cheque during the last four days. These farmers had handed over the land to the government for the proposed small car unit. Cheques will be disbursed among the farmers at Singur after the puja holidays.