Mamata with the pot of Nandigram earth. (Pabitra Das)

Nandigram, March 14: The party with a sickle on its flag today saw its decades-old symbolism about the soil and its tillers hijacked by its biggest adversary.

Mamata Banerjee held up a pot containing Nandigram’s earth and vowed to carry it across Bengal like a sacred icon to oust the CPM, officially signalling that land would be her main plank in the election.

“Do you know why I am carrying the soil of Nandigram back with me? Because without this soil, it will not be possible to defeat the CPM. This soil is purer than gold. I will take this to every Lok Sabha constituency (in Bengal) so it can usher in the winds of change,” the Trinamul Congress chief said, kicking off her election campaign here.

“I have come to Nandigram to begin my campaign…. I am taking our party’s manifesto back to Calcutta after placing it on Nandigram’s soil. The land of Midnapore is sacred to us. If you look at the soil (of Nandigram), you can still see blood,” she told the rally, held on the second anniversary of the March 14 police firing that had left 14 people dead.

Her words made it clear she wanted the Lok Sabha polls to be a referendum on the government’s drive to acquire fertile land for industry — a plank that has helped her drub the CPM in Singur’s panchayats and snatch the Nandigram Assembly seat and East Midnapore zilla parishad.

“Mamata is well aware of the people’s sentiments when the government grabs their land. She wants to cash in on this,” a Trinamul general secretary said.

Land and slogans tied to it — such as the Bengal CPM’s famous “Langal jaar, jomi taar (own the plough, own the land)” — have been the lifeblood of the communist parties. Their emotional appeal has often served as a means to let off steam and divert attention from Left governments’ inability to create jobs and tackle poverty.

With Mamata seizing that all-terrain field gun and loading it with the ammo of Nandigram’s “martyrdom”, the CPM finds itself staring down the wrong end of a barrel it had forged to perfection.

If the Trinamul chief’s land plank strikes a chord among voters, the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government is likely to be reduced to a lame duck for the rest of its term, unable to take any decision that may carry any possibility of immediate unpopularity.

If Mamata were thinking of the irony, she may have been tempted to round her speech off with an old CPM slogan and a wink: “Chaash korbe je, phashal tulbe shey (he/she who tills the land will reap the harvest).”

A recent Trinamul slogan with land as a motif, used repeatedly during the Singur standoff, however, got an outing. Mamata said: “It’s not possible to fight without Ma, Mati, Manush (mother, land, people).”

Congress leader Sukhendu Sekhar Roy attended the rally, saying he had come on Pranab Mukherjee’s instructions. But local Congress leaders were not visible, nor were any from Trinamul ally SUCI, which has fielded candidates against the Congress in nine seats.