A police water canon vehicle on its way to Singur. Picture by Biswarup Dutta

Calcutta, Aug. 23: Hours before the indefinite siege to the Singur factory, the government and Mamata Banerjee spoke of peaceful protests today.

The Trinamul chief said: “Our movement will be a peaceful one. Partymen have been asked to stay away from any provocation and not to get into any confrontation. We don’t want violence and bloodshed in Singur and the administration should stay alert to prevent any sort of trouble there.”

She cast a doubt on the CPM’s intentions. “I am told that CPM men may move around Singur without carrying flags and try to make mischief.”

At Writers’ Buildings, home secretary Asok Mohan Chakrabarti said the government had no plan to obstruct Trinamul from going ahead with its “peaceful, democratic movement”.

He ruled out the possibility of clamping prohibitory orders under Section 144 on the area. “The pro-movement leaders told us the dharna would be peaceful. So the administration will not interfere and there will be no confrontation.”

Mamata said activist Medha Patkar, author Arundhati Roy and Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh would attend tomorrow’s protest.

She appealed to Trinamul supporters to squat on all roads leading to Singur. “I appeal to party workers and the Save Farmland Committee men to sit on all roads leading to Singur,” Mamata said.

Told that this would mean blocking the Durgapur Expressway, she said: “If the highway gets blocked, what can I do? I am fighting for the rights of poor farmers and that has to be done.”

She also hinted that she would not be at the siege zone for the entire dharna period. “I will have to stay in Singur for some days to express solidarity with our workers though I don’t know how long that would be possible.”

She said the CPM-led government should take lessons from the panchayat poll results in Singur and immediately return the 400 acres taken from “unwilling farmers”.

“The chief minister and the industries minister should learn from the verdict given by the people of Singur in the panchayat polls. We won more than 80 per cent of the seats there and even outside Singur. Isn’t that enough for the government to call truce and return the land?” she asked.

Yesterday, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had said his government had sent some papers to leader of Opposition Partha Chatterjee and was expecting some from the party.

Asked about the papers today, Mamata said: “We had asked for a copy of the government’s agreement with the Tatas. But it hasn’t given us that. Probably, the CPM, too, is unaware of the agreement. Papers on land allocation for the mother plant and the ancillary units have been sent and those are of no use to us.”