(From top) Kanan Bala Samanta, Akul Chandra Das, Lalita Das, Geeta Rani Shau. Pictures by Ananda Das and Sanat Kumar Sinha

Singur, June 14: The names of Kanan Bala Samanta and Becharam Shau will enter the hallowed Assembly archives once the Singur land bill becomes law.

The two names will stand out for the amounts listed against them — Rs 10.24 lakh and Rs 55 — but the data sheet will not tell the story behind the statistics.

On Page 224 of the bill, 60-year-old Kanan Bala, the “unpaid awardee” with the single highest cheque amount, is mentioned as the wife of Manik Ch Samanta. Thirty-one pages later, Page 255 features the name of Maniklal Samanta, who did not collect two cheques for Rs 10.91 lakh.

The faceless figures — and the list with imperfect names — have missed a conjugal connection: Maniklal was the husband of Kanan Bala. He died eight years ago.

His widow and son wept tears of joy today as they learned that the Singur bill that will give them back plots of equivalent size has been passed. Residents of Beraberi, Khaserbheri and Gopalnagar villages burst crackers, played with green abir and danced.

Kanan Bala and Maniklal together owned around 2.63 acres in Singur’s Gopalnagar. Kanan Bala had refused to take her cheque for Rs 10.24 lakh that the government had offered for her plot. Another cheque for Rs 10.91 lakh issued for Maniklal’s two plots too remained uncollected.

Maniklal died in 2003 but his plots’ ownership is still not with Kanan Bala and so, she could not have collected the cheque. Dilip, Kanan Bala’s eldest son, said the ownership of his father’s plots had not been transferred to his mother when the land was acquired.

“We are farmers who used to get three to four crops from that land every year. My three sons and I are still dependent on farming and we have another five acres outside the acquired area. We used to get large quantities of paddy and potato from the plots that were acquired. Why should we want to sell our land?” Kanan Bala asked.

“We had always backed Mamata Banerjee’s anti-acquisition movement in Singur. Today we are very happy that now we can get back our land legally. But we want our land on which we can farm again. I also request Mamata to arrange water for irrigation for us,” Kanan Bala added.

Cut to Becharam, who also qualifies to be a member of the “coalition of the unwilling” because he did not accept the Rs 55 cheque issued in his name.

Here comes the damper: Becharam, who lives in Rourkela, cannot be classified as “unwilling”. He and his brother Bholanath, who is no more, had collected cheques for Rs 7.2 lakh each for two other plots.

The Shau brothers did not collect their Rs 55 cheques. No prizes for guessing why: blame it on the paltry amount.

Geeta Rani, the widow of Bholanath who died two years ago, said: “Both my husband and his younger brother Becharam had separate plots of three bighas (one acre) each. They took cheques for Rs 7.2 lakh for their plots. They, however, did not bother to take the cheques for Rs 55 as the amount was very small.”

Akul Chandra Das, 69, a retired primary schoolteacher from Khaserbheri, today accompanied several other “unwilling” farmers to the Assembly to watch the proceedings.

“I can’t explain how I felt. I felt like crying, because I never wanted to sell my land. So, I never went to collect my cheque,” Das said.

Das owned 1.6 acres spread over 26 plots. He refused a cheque for about Rs 10 lakh. “Even though I taught in a school, I am a farmer at heart.”

“Both my husband and I supported Mamata’s anti-acquisition movement from the very first day,” Das’s wife Lalita said.