Calcutta, Sept. 24: The CPM’s South 24-Parganas secretariat today asked a committee of two ministers and two MPs from the district to speed up identification of land for the Salim Group projects.

“This is urgent as some officials from the group are expected to visit Calcutta on October 19 to examine the land for the proposed projects,” CPM district secretary Santimoy Bhattachariya told the leaders of the district unit. CPM sources said Salim Group officials will meet chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and the panel to enquire about the land.

The four-member committee includes land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Molla, minister for Sunderbans development Kanti Ganguly and two MPs Sujan Chakraborty and Shamik Lahiri.

Several secretariat members were learnt to have asked the leadership to ensure prompt payment to farmers whose lands will be taken over for the projects.

“Not only farmland, we want adequate compensation for those who give up their land, shops, houses or any other property for the projects. These people should get the price against their land at the market rate,” a party leader said.

“We have experiences about how the government had treated poor farmers during acquisition of land in Rajarhat,” said a district unit leader. Some of those at the meeting cited cases where farmers in North 24-Parganas were not adequately compensated for land acquired for the construction of the Rajarhat Township.