Police patrol the Kawakhali area on Thursday. Picture by Kundan Yolmo

Siliguri, Nov. 20: The Kawakhali Porajhar Bhumi Raksha Committee today threatened not to part with its land and to stop construction of the township project.

The threat by the save land committee comes after the alleged assault by members of the Sara Bharat Krishak Sabha, the CPM’s farmer wing, yesterday.

“On Sunday, the minister asserted that our syndicate, consisting entirely of land losers, would construct a road in the area earmarked for rehabilitation,” said Harashit Biswas, the secretary of the committee. “Accordingly, we agreed to start work from Wednesday.”

Biswas said as four-five trucks hired by them unloaded soil, stones and sand yesterday, a group of the Krishak Sabha members, who have also formed a syndicate and are building another road, attacked them “without any provocation”, injuring three persons.

Jugal Kishore Sarkar, the vice-president of the save land committee, said: “We want to know why, even after parting with land and working on the basis of decisions taken by the urban development minister, we have to shed blood. We want to make it clear that if a single incident of similar kind occurs in future, we are ready to give our blood but will not part with an inch of land.”

After the incident, a police picket was posted in the area. Suren Das, a Krishak Sabha member, was arrested.

Krishak Sabha leaders, including the CPM’s Darjeeling district secretary Anil Saha, however, refuted the charges. “None of us were involved in yesterday’s incident and have been falsely named in the FIR. We want police to act and investigate rationally,” he said.

Saha said they would demand dialogues to end the stalemate and suggested it would be better if there was only one syndicate. “Such undesirable clashes as it happened yesterday could have been avoided,” the district CPM leader said.

The minister, Asok Bhattacharya, said he had heard the incident. “We will soon sit to sort out the problem and ensure that such clashes do not recur.”

In Kawakhali, 4km from here, 302 acres owned by 1,400-odd people were acquired for the township project. Of this, the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority has kept 87 acres and handed over the remaining 215 to the Bengal Universal Unitech Siliguri Projects Limited.

Around 850 land losers, qualifying the norms mentioned in a rehabilitation package, will be provided plots free on 36 acres of the SJDA, while the remaining 51 acres will be used for different purposes.

So far, 425 plots have been allotted to the land losers, while more than 1,000 land-losers have received their compensation, consenting to sell their plots to the government.