Mamata, Bhattacharjee

Calcutta, Sept. 13: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Mamata Banerjee will address tit-for-tat rallies in Singur next week as the battle for the small-car project spills to the streets after talks collapsed.

“We will now go to the people and show how serious the government has always been about resolving the impasse,” Left Front chairman Biman Bose said on a day both sides hardened their stand.

Yesterday, the Trinamul Congress leader had rejected a new compensation package that the chief minister offered in their second round of talks.

The Left Front endorsed the package at a meeting this morning and decided to hold a rally in Singur on Monday to marshall popular support.

Mamata said this was a violation of the September 7 agreement reached at Raj Bhavan, but announced a rally of her own on Tuesday. “We had suspended our agitation responding to the governor’s initiative,” she said. “But we cannot sit idle if the CPM holds a rally in Singur.”

Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who is in Delhi, urged the two sides to resume talks.

But amid reports of a possible withdrawal by the Tatas, WBIDC managing director Subrata Gupta signalled there would be no further negotiations between the Trinamul and government teams.

“They (Trinamul) contacted me to ask if a meeting would happen today. I said a package had been declared by the state to ‘your seniormost leader. If you have anything specific to discuss about the package or its implementation, we can talk’. They replied that they had nothing to add to what their leader had said. I asked what they would like to discuss. They couldn’t say anything and hung up,” Gupta said.

Bhattacharjee told the Left Front meeting that Mamata, in response to his invite for talks yesterday, had promised to “settle the dispute once and for all” if “only you (the government) try a little more to accommodate my demands”.

“It had been made clear to her while extending the invitation what would be on offer,” the chief minister added.

Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee denied that Mamata knew the details of the package before the meeting at the Nandan complex.

Biman Bose said: “The package that Buddhababu offered her is by far the best in the country, yet she chose not to accept it.”

A city-based industrialist appeared to endorse this when he said: “This is a package difficult to emulate. No company can afford to do it for setting up industry. I wonder if the government can offer such a package to all other future projects in Bengal.”

The front and the CPM secretariat authorised the government to publicise the offer through newspaper advertisements.

“Now let the people judge how farmer-friendly you are,” a senior CPM minister told a Trinamul functionary who had called to find out the government’s mind the morning after the Nandan damper.

Asked if she would resume her Singur siege, Mamata evaded a direct reply: “Let the governor return, we will decide on our next course of action after talking to him.”

Gandhi had signed off his statement with a Rabindrasangeet line: “Jiban jakhon shukai jai, karuna dharai esho (When the heart is hard and parched up, come upon me with a shower of mercy).”

The Left, which has been wary of the governor’s initiative, was openly critical today. “We have no mono (mind, which rhymes with Nano) meter that will tell us what are his real intentions,” Bose said.

But Mamata, for whom the governor remains the only route to the talks table, said: “We still hope his intervention will help resolve the stalemate.”