Gory memories of Nandigram were rekindled almost after a decade when at least one person died and several others were injured as police on Tuesday burst tear gas shells and opened fire at villagers protesting land acquisition at Bhangore Village flanking the eastern suburbs of Kolkata.
By quirk of fate Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday was given a taste of her own bitter medicine when thousands of villagers staged a violent protest against what they said was a forced acquisition of land for construction of a power grid sub-station by the Power Grid Corporation of India limited.
All hell broke loose in the villages under Bhangore block when the protesters blocked roads with tree logs a la Nandigram-lalgarh movement, fought pitched battles with the police, torched police vans and deposited six of them in nearby ponds.
All areas from Shyamnagar to Polerhat to Padmapukur were literally on fire sources said adding thousands of youth carrying brickbat, swords and bamboo sticks fought intermittent battles against the police throughout the day.
At least four persons were admitted to the State-run RG Kar Medical College with bullet injuries sources said adding a 22-year-old student died of bullet injuries. Some policemen were also injured after being hit by brickbats that flew in from all sides.
Even as the villages burnt State Government played the same old Marxist tune blaming “outsiders.” State Education Minister and Trinamool general secretary Partho Chatterjee accused ultra-left students wing from Jadavpur University for the buildup.
While the Government’s officially stood by the “outsider” theory saying, “some naxalite students infiltrated the area and provoked the villagers,” Chatterjee blamed it all on the land sharks who had in the past few years purchased huge amount of lands in the area and were now trying to resist the power grid to save their own interest.
Apparently fearing repetition of history and unnerved Chief Minister quickly got Power Minister Sobhandeb Chatterjee to call off the project that could otherwise have gone great distance in rural electrification in South 24 Parganas district.
The fierce land struggle at Nandigram led by a consortium of forces under the umbrella provided by Banerjee’s TMC between 2007 and 2011 got the better of better of three-decade-old left rule in the State.
The Tuesday’s seemed to be the first serious administrative challenge before the Chief Minister who remains normally in control of things. While a listless administration meekly capitulated hundreds of policemen beat a hasty retreat leaving back government vehicles which were then ransacked, torched and pushed into the nearby ponds.
Repeated efforts by the Government to pacify the agitated crowd by sending local MlA and Minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah to the spot failed as he was not allowed by the villagers to enter the village.
The Chief Minister then tweeted in the evening that she would stick to her stated position of not acquiring land by force.
“My Government will never take people’s land against their will,” Banerjee tweeted while a police report filed at the State Secretariat Nabanna blamed “40-50 outsiders” who had created the mischief by instigating the villagers.
The problem started way back in 2013 when local TMC strongman Arabul Islam acquired 13 acres of land from farmers for PGCIl (a central government enterprise) to set up a substation of 440/220 kv to transmit power between Bengal and Purnia in Bihar.
However a local leader Kalu Sheikh protested the acquisition of land until things went out of hand a few days ago with thousands of villagers staging road-blockades. This at a time when the power grid is almost on the verge of becoming functional.
Though the Government said that the project would not start until the villagers gave a go-ahead the police on Monday night picked up Kalu Sheikh leading the situation to explode on Tuesday.
The situation had entered such a pass that there was no police force inside the villages much the way it happened during the Nandigram-lalgarh movement. Meanwhile, in a sudden move the Government had decided to send in a large contingent of Kolkata Police that will replace the South 24 Parganas Police apparently to identify the “outsiders” involved in the movement.