In an apparent bid to set foot in Singur, BJP leader Varun Gandhi on Tuesday proceeded to pick up from where Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had left after the anti-Nano movement.
The BJP national secretary who had on Monday promised to tour Bengal villages ahead of the 2014 general elections offered legal help to the ‘unwilling farmers’ of Singur allegedly left “high and dry” by the Trinamool Congress.
“The locals have been left high and dry after the Singur movement as both the left Front and Trinamool Congress reaped rich dividend from the plight of the farmers who could neither get a job generating industry thanks to the land movement, nor could they get their farm land back, as there was no guarantee of any early disposal of the law suit,” he said.
Banerjee, the then Opposition leader, had carried out a prolonged anti-land acquisition movement in Singur forcing the Tata Motors the beneficiaries of the 1,000 acres of land forcibly acquired by the then left Government to move out of the area after completing nearly 80 percent of the small car plant.
While more than 80 per cent of the farmers had accepted compensation cheques given by the past Government the rest jonied Banerjee hoping to get their land back.
After Banerjee came to power on the land plank she got enacted a law to take back the Singur lands leased out to the Tatas. However the law was challenged in the Court and was declared unconstitutional in the Calcutta High Court. It was currently pending in the Supreme Court.
“I have not come here to politicise the issue as many people may say,” Gandhi who was currently in charge of Bengal said adding he would help the poor farmers sucked into the vortex of an unplanned movement.
He would file petitions on behalf of the farmers he maintained informing how many farmers who “complained to me that they would not be able to accept compensation now even if they wanted to as they had not joined the Trinamool Congress.”
Curiously, while Banerjee had been insisting for returning of 400 acres of land from the allocated 1000 acres the district administration of Hooghly in which Singur lies have hardly been able to find unwilling farmers owning more than 56 acres of land.
Gandhi also vowed to take the matter with President Pranab Mukherjee, ruing how a hasty decision by the earlier Government hit agriculture hard in the area and how irresponsible movement by the Opposition failed the cause of industrialisation.