Calcutta, Nov. 11: Central minister Deepa Das Munshi today said the Dubrajpur clash, where land protesters had alleged police firing on them, was a rerun of Nandigram.
“You remember Mamata Banerjee had stood up for farmers unwilling to part with their land in Nandigram and Singur. But now, her own government is in power and yet the same thing is happening,” the junior central urban development minister said at a programme in Topsia.
“Unlike in Nandigram, in Loba (under the Dubrajpur police station area in Birbhum) people are willing to give land. Yet they are being shot at by the police and Trinamul activists. The most striking paradox is that the police force is now under Mamata Banerjee, who was propelled to the position she now holds by the movements she led in Nandigram and Singur,” Deepa, the Congress MP from Raiganj, said at a blood donation camp in Topsia to mark the 124th birth anniversary of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.
On Tuesday, the police had clashed with villagers in Loba who had held on to an excavator owned by DVC-Emta to demand higher prices for land the company was in the process of acquiring for a coal mining project. The villagers had alleged that the police had fired at them, a charge denied by the government.
Five years ago, police firing on land protesters in Nandigram had claimed 14 lives, which eventually led to the ouster of the Left Front government.
Deepa also spoke about her pet issue — the proposed AIIMS-like hospital in Raiganj. She said on the sidelines of the programme that she had spoken to Union health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad about the project.
“He has assured me that the super-speciality hospital will be set up in Raiganj…. The vision of Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi is that the proposed AIIMS-like hospitals should come up in rural areas. The Union health minister has assured me that this vision will be fulfilled. There is no possibility of moving the project to Kalyani,” Deepa said.
The state government wants to shift the project to Kalyani, which is close to Calcutta.
Deepa said 15 of the 16 states where the AIIMS-like hospitals are supposed to come up had acquired land for the project. “Only in Bengal has land not been acquired so far. I can assure you that the first AIIMS-like facility in Bengal will come up in Raiganj. The state government can build five or six such hospitals, at Kalyani or wherever they please. We won’t mind,” she added.
