Karat and(Below) Bhattacharjee

Calcutta, May 29: The government will avoid a repeat of Singur and Nandigram and be “cautious” while acquiring land for industry, the CPM is said to have resolved behind closed doors after three-day talks ending this week.

The decision taken by CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and party state secretary Biman Bose today found an echo in industries minister Nirupam Sen’s words. “The government will acquire land for the (Salim group’s) projects only after a consensus at the grassroots level,” he said in Delhi.

Most CPM leaders at the state committee meeting, which concluded on Monday, identified farmers’ fear of losing their land, following the events of Singur and Nandigram, as one of the most important reasons for the Left’s panchayat poll losses. Bhattacharjee admitted this, too, sources said.

“Farmers feared acquisition of their land even where it was not planned. In Nandigram, people believed the Opposition campaign that we would grab their land after the panchayat polls. We failed to convince the people of the benefits of industrialisation,’’ Bhattacharjee said on Tuesday.

“The Salim projects became a byword for land take-over and the focus of the Opposition’s attack on us. In the panchayat polls, we suffered the most in districts where the Salim group’s projects were supposed to come up. So it will be wise for the leadership to go slow on the Salim projects,’’ a CPM state committee member from South 24-Parganas said.

The message of “consensus building” on land acquisition has become all the more important because of the polls to 13 municipalities, including some in South 24-Parganas, that are scheduled for June 29.

Panchayat minister Surjya Kanta Mishra said: “With three zilla parishads out of our hands and erosion of votes in other districts, we have our concerns about the parliamentary elections also. That’s why we need to act fast.”

Nandigram peace

Nearly 200 Trinamul Congress supporters, who had fled their homes in Nandigram after the panchayat polls, returned tonight after a peace meeting at the local police station.