Calcutta, Nov. 8: The Trinamul Congress leadership’s truce call in Nandigram has sparked a debate in the party on whether it has come too late.

According to some leaders, it would have been easier to “arm-twist” the government into “talking on Trinamul’s terms” just after the March 14 police firing when public sympathy for the party was at its highest.

They pointed out four errors the party had made:

It failed to take advantage of the peace initiative offered by Jyoti Basu

It mixed up Nandigram with Singur, diluting the gains of Nandigram by projecting an anti-industrialisation image

It aligned with Maoists who gave the spontaneous protest a violent character

Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee could not “book the profit”, in stock market terms. In other words, she failed to exit when her gains were high, speculating on more profit.

A beleaguered Trinamul had got a fillip when it launched a campaign against the state government after the death of 14 villagers in the Nandigram firing.

It helped the Trinamul acquire political space in Nandigram by instilling confidence in the public that this was the party that stood for the rights of villagers.

According to some party leaders, that would have been the right time to start a dialogue with the state or district administration.

“We were then in a position to arm-twist the government as it was on the back foot and, hence, would have accepted a good number of our demands. But in the eyes of the public, we have come out poorly by delaying our decision to ask for peace,” said a senior Trinamul MLA.

The leaders felt that the Trinamul had won the first round of the battle when chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee declared that land would not be acquired in Nandigram for a chemical hub as the “people there did not want so”.

According to a Trinamul leader, Mamata should have then asked her party workers in Nandigram to call off the agitation.

The chief minister had repeatedly questioned the continuing presence of the Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee in Nandigram when the government had changed the location of the chemical hub, the Trinamul leader said. “But Didi shifted the focus to the March 14 police firing and wanted the government to call it a genocide. Buddhababu did not oblige and we had to settle for less.”