Jan. 7: Union home minister P. Chidambaram has requested chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to “reschedule all appointments and visit Delhi immediately” in the wake of the Nitai killings.

Governor M.K. Narayanan piled pressure on the government from Calcutta, telling the authorities through a public statement to “act decisively” to break the expanding “circle of bloodshed”, “irrespective of the affiliations of the groups involved”.

Chidambaram, who was locked in a letter war with the chief minister over the very issue of armed camps that ignited the bloodletting today, said he had written another missive to Bhattacharjee.

“I have written a letter to the chief minister and drawn his attention to this grave incident and requested him to kindly reschedule all appointments and visit Delhi immediately,” the home minister said in the capital in the evening.

By then, sources in Writers’ Buildings said, the chief minister had already left his office. It was not clear if he had received the letter till late tonight.

Neither was it known if the chief minister would reschedule his appointments and head to Delhi. Last week, Bhattacharjee had expressed his inability to do so when Chidambaram had invited him to talks between January 3 and 7.

Bengal officials had then said the chief minister had engagements till the month-end. Tomorrow, Bhattacharjee is scheduled to inaugurate a bridge and address a meeting. A visit to Singur — his first since the Tata pullout — is lined up on Sunday, while on Monday, he is scheduled to inaugurate a museum at Writers’.

In Calcutta, governor Narayanan stopped short of expressing “cold horror” — the phrase used by his predecessor Gopalkrishna Gandhi when he reacted to the Nandigram firing.

But Narayanan was blunt enough to say that “not even mothers and daughters have been spared. For our state it is a day of sorrow and shame.”

“No democracy can allow such violence; no civilised society can tolerate such wanton disregard for human lives and no state can accept such mindless discord,” the governor said.

Not mincing words, he added: “This had gone on for far too long. It is incumbent upon the authorities to begin to act decisively to pre-empt, prevent or quell attempts at violence, irrespective of the affiliations of the groups involved.”

The appeal to take action “irrespective of affiliations” reflected the concern expressed by Chidambaram about “harmads” — a word that infuriated the CPM.

The governor nudged the government to act before it was too late. “A decisive stage has been reached for the government to act, before it becomes a point of no return,” Narayanan said.

The former intelligence chief also made it clear that he was clued in on what was happening in the state, listing a string of places hit by violence.

“With unfailing regularity, each day begins and ends with news of political clashes in different areas of the state. Hardly a district remains unscarred by such conflicts. Khejuri, Nanoor, Sashan, Mangalkot, Jhalda, Indas, Canning, Ketugram, Khanakul… the circle of bloodshed has been expanding….”

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