Mamta to launch campaign for Lok Sabha elections

KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will launch her campaign for the three-phase Lok Sabha elections beginning April 30 by addressing a huge gathering at Nandigram on Saturday. Already Trinamool Congress workers from different south Bengal districts have started rushing towards Nandigram--which was a political hotbed just two years back. Mamata has selected Nandigram as her launching pad for poll campaign because she wants to highlight the "CPIM atrocities on the people of the area" and to criticise the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government for the industrial and land acquisition policies it has been following.

Just two years ago on the same day, 14 people were killed in police firing and sporadic clashes between CPIM and Trinamool Congress activists at Nandigram. The local people had protested the Haldia Development Authority (HDA)'s move to acquire land at Nandigram for setting up a SEZ here which was supposed to be developed by the Indonesia-based Salim Group. The trouble continued in the region till December 2997 and the Left Front government was forced to give up its plan for establishing the SEZ in Nandigram following stiff resistance from the local people.

"I will be holding my first election rally at Nandigram because I just don't want to forget the CPIM-sponsored terrorism at Nandigram and also I want to remember those who had lost their lives in police bulets and attacks by CPIM men," Mamata said before leaving for Nandigram. Interesringly, her party won the Nandigram assembly by-election and Trinamool Congress has also managed to wrest the East Midnapore zilla parishad from the CPIM during the panchayat elections held in May 2008.