Trinamul Congress workers, led by Tamluk MP Subhendu Adhikari (holding a microphone), demonstrate in front of Nandigram police station on Thursday to protest the shooting of a party leader, who is in hospital. (Jahangir Badsa)

Nandigram, May 13: Nandigram, the launch pad that propelled Mamata Banerjee into Bengal’s political stratosphere, may have been missing from her spiel of late but a shooting last night has shone a light on little private battles and intrigue that have filled the vacuum left behind by the land war.

Around 9.30pm yesterday, the deputy chief of the Trinamul Congress-controlled Bhekutia gram panchayat, Saroj Bhuniya, was shot in the stomach and shoulder by unknown assailants. Bhuniya is in SSKM Hospital in Calcutta.

Even though the district Trinamul Congress blames the CPM for the shooting, the allegation does seem a bit far-fetched because the CPM is non-existent in Nandigram.

Nearly 1,000 CPM leaders and workers have fled Nandigram since the anti-land acquisition movement by the Trinamul-led Bhoomi Uchchhed Pratirodh Committee was launched in January 2007.

“Since the beginning of the land war in Nandigram till the Lok Sabha polls last year, around 1,000 party leaders and workers have fled, some with their families. So there is no question of anyone remotely linked to the CPM having shot at Bhuniya. Trinamul is dominant in Nandigram now,” said Ashok Guria, a CPM district secretariat member.

But Tamluk MP and Trinamul leader Subhendu Adhikari, who led a demonstration in front of Nandigram police station this afternoon, claimed “CPM goons” had tried to kill Bhuniya.

“At a time we are trying to step up development in Nandigram, CPM goons are trying to disrupt our efforts by targeting good organisers like Saroj Bhuniya,” Adhikari said.

Police officers investigating the shooting said that over the past year, Trinamul had witnessed the birth of dissident groups who say only the Pratirodh Committee leaders have been rewarded with plum posts in rural bodies.

“For example, Pratirodh Committee leaders like Abu Taher and Sheikh Sufiyan have respectively bagged the posts of the deputy chief of the panchayat samiti and the karmadhyaksha in the zilla parishad. But others in the lower ranks did not even get nominated to contest the rural polls,” a senior police officer said.

The feud has broken through the veneer at a time Mamata has not been stressing Nandigram too much, in line with her new-found urgency to reach out to constituencies such as industry and the middle class.

The dissidence was evident in Bhekutia, where the Trinamul had won all the 16 seats.

“Two months ago, Bhuniya had asked gram panchayat chief Rina Das, who has the backing of the dissidents, to step down. After Das refused, Bhuniya brought a no-confidence motion against her. Two days later, he was shot at near his home but the bullets missed him. We suspect the dissident group was behind the attack,” a police officer said.

There has been no evidence of Maoist involvement in the attacks on the Trinamul leader.

Villagers in Nandigram complained that even though Trinamul had swept the panchayat polls in East Midnapore and won all 17 gram panchayats and both the panchayat samitis in Nandigram, no major development project had been taken up.

Only a road connecting Nandigram town to Sonachura, a project under the Prime Minister’s Gram Sadak Yojana, has been completed. Recently, Mamata announced a new railway line connecting Nandigram to Howrah.

“Ever since the panchayat elections in May 2008, only routine development work under poverty alleviation schemes has taken place. Some tube wells have been installed and drainage canals cleared. But no major project has been taken up,” said farmer and Pratirodh Committee supporter Srikanta Paik, 47.

Rashbehari Khanra, 38, a farmer from Gangra near Sonachura who was hit by a bullet during the police firing on March 14, 2007, when 14 people were killed, said the quality of life had not changed in Nandigram.

“I had to sell off my land for treatment. I can’t work. Thousands of villagers had taken part in the anti-land acquisition movement. But there has been no improvement in their lifestyle,” Khanra said.