Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee & Mamata Banerjee

Calcutta, Feb. 9: A day after the Trinamul Congress rejected his seventh offer for talks, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said he was “still ready for a dialogue with the Opposition” on land acquisition in areas where the process has not yet begun, like Nandigram.

“You know about my letter to leader of Opposition Partha Chatterjee and his reply to it. But I’m still ready for a dial- ogue with the Opposition where the acquisition process has not yet started, including Nandigram,” the chief minister said.

Hours after the chief minister’s letter with the talks offer reached Chatterjee, Trinamul had turned it down saying they could be held only if the government returned the land “forcibly acquired in Singur”.

Talking about Singur, Bhattacharjee admitted that some landowners have not collected compensation for the plots acquired from them. “If they have anything to say, they can talk to the director of industries or to the (Hooghly) district magistrate,” he said.

The chief minister did not react to Trinamul’s demand to scrap the Tata Motors project, about 40 km from Calcutta.

Mamata Banerjee, who had earlier insisted that she would hold her Saturday rally in Singur defying prohibitory orders, today shifted the venue by some 15 km.

The rally will be held at Kapaseria, a village on the bor- der of Chanditala and Singur.

Earlier, the home secretary had made it clear that no rally would be allowed in Singur.

Asked about the chief minister’s remark, party spokesman Saugata Ray said what Chatterjee had said yesterday — “work on the Tata unit has to stop and the forcibly acquired land returned”.

Singur PIL

The high court today asked the state to file within a week a detailed report on land acquisition in Singur.

Hearing a PIL filed by an NGO, the division bench of acting Chief Justice B. Bhattacharya and Justice K.K. Prasad told the government to state how much land it had acquired and how many farmers offered their plots willingly.

Advocate-general Balai Ray challenged the maintainability of the case saying an NGO had no right to move the petition as it was not a victim. But the court admitted it.