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Nandigram erupts : CPI(M) forced to compromise

	March 19, 2007

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee sent the police to Nandigram in East Midnapore district last week to clear the barricades put up by the people protesting against acquisition of their land for the special economic zone (SEZ) to be built by the Salim group of Indonesia. In the resulting clashes on Wednesday, March 14, at least 14 people, half of them women, were killed and several others injured in police firing. As the terrified people fled from the area, CPI(M) cadres reportedly moved in trying to establish their control.



There was all round condemnation of the police action, both in West Bengal and in the country as a whole. Parliament functioning was affected over the issue for a couple of days. There were few supporters of the West Bengal Government and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee though they claimed that the Nandigram violence was triggered by outsiders trying to fish in troubled waters. Even within the Left Front, the CPI(M) did not find support for the State Government’s action from its allies, the CPI, the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party. The three parties alleged that they had been kept in the dark about the Government action in Nandigram and the CPI(M) was behaving as if West Bengal was ruled by a one party government. They threatened to pull out their Ministers from the state cabinet if the plan to set up an SEZ in Nandigram was not abandoned.





Chief Minister climbs down : Crisis averted



The Left Front discussed the matter on two days last week, Thursday and Saturday. The meeting on Thursday was inconclusive as the Left Front allies turned down the Chief Minister’s plea for accepting his view point on Nandigram and other proposed SEZs. The CPI, RSP and the Forward Bloc threatened that they would pull out their Ministers unless the Chief Minister owned up responsibility for the conflagration in Nandigram, withdrew police from the area and declared that no SEZ would be set up there.



Ultimately, the crisis in the Left Front was averted on Saturday, March 17, when it was announced that land in the area would not be acquired for setting up industry.



It was also decided that the police deployed in the area, a move that triggered violence there on Wednesday, would be withdrawn in phases.



The State Government would have to be cautious to prevent a recurrence of the “unfortunate” violence, it was agreed.



Three major constituents of the Front - the All India Forward Bloc, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Communist Party of India - had been expressing their reservations about the decision of the State Government to send the police to Nandigram and strongly condemned the recent police action there.





The State Government had proposed a chemical hub at Nandigram but weeks before the recent violence, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said the project would not be set up there if the people of the area were averse to the idea.



At the end of the discussions, chairman of the Left Front Committee Biman Bose said the leaders of all the partners “unanimously resolved that the Left Front was there, is there and will be there.”



Veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu and Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee were present at the talks.



It was decided that the State Government would function in conformity with the Left Front’s policies.





“End CPI(M)’s one-party rule”



The Left allies demanded an end to “CPI(M)’s one party rule”, and condemned the police firing. “I am the head of the Government; it is my responsibility”, the Chief Minister said in the Left Front meeting. Irate Front partners agreed. “There will be no SEZ and no land acquisition for industry. The chemical hub may come up in Haldia instead. I will also withdraw police in phases from the area,” the Chief Minister said.



“We did not understand that there would be such a huge resistance in Nandigram. Our assessment of the situation is wrong. I did not know that police excess would be to such an extent. I am shocked. I am sad,” the Chief Minister said. “People will have to be compensated and rehabilitated. Their treatment has to be arranged. There is a lot of work to be done now.” he said. The Chief Minister, however, argued against tendering a public apology.



“The CBI is probing. The High Court has ordered it to find out who was responsible. At this stage, I should not publicly own up responsibility and apologise,” he said.









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Left Front Agreement



The Chief Minister and leaders from all junior Left Front partners were present when LF chairman Biman Bose read out the decisions taken at the meeting:



* Government will not acquire any land in Nandigram for any industry.



* Police contingents will be withdrawn from Nandigram in phases



* Left Front partners will try to normalise the situation through social and political exercises.



* The government will act in accordance with the policies of the Left Front. The core committee of the Cabinet will meet regularly.



* The Nandigram incident was tragic and the government will be careful to ensure that such an incident is not repeated.



* Left Front partners will meet more frequently and all important political decisions will be taken by the Front after discussions.



* All allies have agreed that the Front was united, is united and will remain united.



* Important issues will also be discussed at bipartite meetings among Front partners.



* If any member of the Cabinet has anything to say about any party then he will give it in writing to the party in question instead of making public statements.



—————————Box ends————————





Army not to be sent in



Defence Minister A.K. Antony said in Thiruvananthapuram on March 17 that there was no need to send in the Army to handle the situation in Nandigram. He termed the police action in Nandigram as “unfortunate.” He said there is no proposal to send the Army as such situations must be handled by the state governments. Antony said he does not want to make the Nandigram incident a topic of political debate as the CBI inquiry is on.





Worse than Jalianwala Bagh : Advani



A team of members of Parliament belonging to the National Democratic Alliance, visited the affected villages of Nandigram on March 17 while a Congress team visited the disturbed areas on Sunday.



After visiting the affected areas, BJP leader L.K. Advani demanded that the Union Government should invoke Art. 355 of the Constitution to deal with the situation in Nandigram. Apart from Advani, the NDA team included Sushma Swaraj, George Fernandes, S.S. Ahluwalia, Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy.



“I have never seen such a horrific situation in my life where women and children offering puja were fired upon indiscriminately,” Advani said, seeking the Prime Minister’s intervention to ensure an impartial investigation by the CBI that is probing the incident.



Invoking images of the Jalianwala Bagh massacre, Advani said in Nandigram, the police had aimed at the chests and bellies of the victims, including women who were offering puja. He said the Marxist Government in West Bengal was no better than the British colonial regime.



Advani, visibly moved by his visit to Nandigram where he spoke to a large number of victims, said the people will not forgive the Marxists for Wednesday’s massacre and history will not forget such a macabre incident, unheard of anywhere else in the country.



Senior BJP MP Sushma Swaraj and NDA convener George Fernandes said, the CPI(M)-led Left Front Government had “forfeited its right to be the people’s representative”.



Ignoring threats from Marxist cadres, more than 6,000 villagers had gathered at Sonachura Bazaar to meet the NDA leaders. They demanded the “most severe punishment” for Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Chairman of the Haldia Development Authority Lakshman Seth, CPI(M) MP, holding them responsible for the massacre.



Pointing out that the Left Front constituents and veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu had condemned the police action, Advani said the Government had forfeited its right to rule West Bengal, “particularly after the Governor and the High Court condemned the brutal killing of innocent people.”



The NDA leaders said that they will meet President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to raise the Nandigram issue. Advani said the violent incidents at Nandigram were the result of a Stalinist mind-set and the creation in three decades of a parallel government of the ruling party, the CPI(M).





CBI seizes huge cache of arms



The CBI, which has been asked by the Calcutta High Court to probe the Nandigram incidents, arrested ten people on March 17 and seized a large quantity of arms and ammunition from them. The arrests were made at Khejuri, in East Midnapore, during raids by the CBI. The District Superintendent of Police declined to specify the political affiliation of those arrested by the CBI.



CBI sleuths from Delhi accompanied by local officers and forensic experts inspected several areas of Gokulnagar village near Nandigram and dug up the earth at some places to find out whether arms and bodies had been buried there as claimed by the local people.



On Thursday, the Calcutta High Court had taken suo moto cognizance of the Nandigram incidents and directed the CBI to probe them. It also directed the state government to file an affidavit explaining the events that resulted in firing and deaths of many persons.



In a packed courtroom, senior advocate Kalyan Banerjee produced before Chief Justice Surendra Singh Nijjar and Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose several newspapers to show high-handedness of the state police authorities that fired to kill.



Several advocates started making submissions simultaneously. It was submitted that police personnel acted in a most inhumane and barbaric manner and had not even followed the police manual. They had not only failed to provide the injured with medical facilities, but also prevented others from providing the same.



Sardar Amjad Ali submitted that people who lost their relatives could not even get near the corpses. The entire area was being razed and looting and destruction was on.



A petition filed on behalf of two NGOs complained that nobody was allowed to enter the area even for providing medical facilities to the injured.



It was submitted that CPI(M) cadres had taken control of Nandigram and its surrounding areas and were not allowing opposition politicians and media-persons. Two NGOs were granted permission to visit the area and to provide medical facilities. The families of the dead and injured were also permitted to visit the area. The court also directed steps to be taken to identify bodies.





Jyoti Basu critical of Govt. functioning



Veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu, who ultimately helped in working out a compromise at the Saturday meeting of the Left Front, was critical of the state government functioning at the earlier meeting on Thursday.



Basu hinted that he had no prior information about the police action in Nandigram, let alone the Left Front partners. “I am being compelled to say that the Government is taking some decisions in recent times keeping the partners in the dark. Is this the way the Left Front government should function ?” the former CM asked.



He didn’t stop at that. “Some two or three party leaders are taking the calls these days. We should behave more responsibly,” Basu said.



In his 25-minute speech, Basu also gave the police a piece of his mind. “I have been told that the mob went violent. How many police personnel were injured ? On the contrary, I saw on TV men with bullet injuries on their back. Why is it so ? Did the police open fire when they were on their heels ? All these things need to be looked into,” The CPI(M) patriarch said.



Basu’s criticism came after CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose spoke in defence of the CM. “Our party was under attack in Nandigram. Our activists have been killed, rendered homeless and they were not able to come back to their villages. The Government cannot just wait indefinitely,” he said.





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Governor’s rare action : Puts the Government in the dock



West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi, who happens to be Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, issued a public statement questioning the wisdom of the police action, while sticking to constitutional protocol. Observers say without blame fixing, the Governor had put the Government in the dock in no uncertain terms.



In doing so, Gandhi became the first Governor of West Bengal in 30 years of the Left Front’s rule to indict the government within constitutional norms.



Usually a Governor would seek reports from the state government before sending his own to the Union Home Ministry. This time, Gandhi issued a statement on his own even before he formally heard the Chief Minister’s version. Nor did he wait for the statement that Bhattacharjee was to make on the Nandigram incident in the Assembly.



Gandhi’s action was, however, different from earlier cases when state Governors were critical of the state government on various issues.



The worst case of the Governor-Government row happened during A.P. Sharma’s tenure at Raj Bhavan in 1983-84. The difference came out in the open over Sharma’s choice of Santosh Bhattacharya as vice-chancellor of Calcutta University, overruling two Front nominees.



The other Governor, who rubbed Basu the wrong way, especially on the issue of illegal migration of Bangladeshis into the state, was T.V. Rajeswar, currently the Governor of Uttar Pradesh. Basu once dismissively referred to Rajeswar’s “police” background - he belonged to the IPS.



It is generally agreed in political circles that Gandhi has strictly adhered to his constitutional role. Coming from such a Governor, his censure of the government is unprecedented in the Left’s long rule.



The Chief Minister said he has “high regards” for the Governor and claimed that he had a correspondence with Gandhi on the Nandigram issue.



Several Front leaders appreciated Gandhi for taking a “bold stand” vis-a-vis the Nandigram issue.



The Opposition parties spoke highly about the Governor. “Gandhi has rightly censured the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government for the genocide in Nandigram,” said former state Congress chief Somen Mitra.



On the other hand, Subhas Chakraborty said, “I have doubts if the Governor has the constitutional authority to issue a public statement on the working of the government,” he said.



Gandhi paid a visit to the Tamluk district hospital to enquire about the condition of the injured undergoing treatment there. He assured them of proper medical care and assistance.



————————Box ends here———————





Parliament disruption : No joint delegation



Parliament functioning was disrupted by the opposition storm over the Nandigram issue for three days last week. The Manmohan Singh Government, doing tightrope walking, rejected on March 16 the NDA’s vociferous demand for sending a joint parliamentary delegation or an all-party delegation to Nandigram to take stock of the situation. The Government also dismissed the opposition demand for a resolution in Parliament on the issue.



The CPI(M) said if a parliamentary delegation was sent to Nandigram, it would be violative of the country’s constitutional and federal structure. CPI(M) Parliamentary party leader Sitaram Yechury said, since 1952, not a single parliamentary delegation had been sent to any state to assess the law and order situation there. He said law and order comes under the state government’s purview and such delegations had been sent only to places where incidents of communal violence and atrocities on vulnerable sections like the scheduled castes, had taken place.



Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi said communal riots and law and order situation in a part of a state could not be considered at par. He said the Centre has limitations under existing constitutional norms, but we are ready to discuss Nandigram.



In a statement in the Lok Sabha on Friday, March 16, Home Minister Shivraj Patil said the policemen opened fire in Nandigram in ‘self-defence.’



Patil said that ‘the police initially fired rubber bullets’ to control the situation, but it yielded no results.



“Ultimately, the police had to open fire in self-defence to disperse the mob,” he said, which left many farmers dead and many others injured.



Referring to the situation that led to the killings, Patil said that the police movement started at 10 am on March 14 in Nandigram area. “While one of the police parties could move into Nandigram without resistance, two other police parties were confronted by large gatherings of hostile people,” he said.



“When the police asked them to disperse, they paid no heed and resorted to heavy brick-batting, causing injury to some policemen. To disperse the mob, police lobbed tear gas shells. The mob then became more agitated and started hurling bombs followed by opening of fire,” he said.



“A few policemen sustained splinter injuries. To control the situation, police initially fired rubber bullets, but this again yielded no results. Ultimately, the police had to open fire in self-defence, causing dispersal of the mob,” Patil said.





Congress dilemma



While the West Bengal unit of the Congress has condemned the Nandigram incidents, the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre has been forced to do tightrope walking over the violence.

With the Left parties providing critical support to the UPA coalition, the party’s response to the killings in Nandigram was muted.



The West Bengal unit of the Congress has joined forces with Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress to oppose the SEZ at Nandigram and took active part in the protests against the project.



At the Centre, Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressed deep concern over the situation in Nandigram, but did not go as far as to condemn the police action.



Defence Minister and West Bengal Congress president Mukherjee sought a detailed account of the Nandigram happenings from Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee over the phone and told him to avoid using force in such situations. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi wrote to the Chief Minister saying that firing would only provoke tension.



Reports say a Central minister who did not want to be named, summed up the Congress constraints in the situation. Asked if Sonia Gandhi would fly to Nandigram like she did to Orissa’s Kalinganagar where police firing had killed tribals protesting land acquisition in Jan. 2006, he said, “Do you want us to sacrifice our Government so soon ?”







No going back on SEZs : Kamal Nath



In the meantime, Commerce and Industry Minister Kamal Nath has said that the Government will not “politically wriggle out of” SEZs. In an interview with a TV channel, he expressed the hope that the empowered group of Ministers will soon clear SEZs where no land acquisition issues are involved.



Asked if after the recent killings in Nandigram the Government remained committed to SEZs or would use the present freeze to politically wriggle out. Kamal Nath said, “There is no political wriggling out. It’s an act of Parliament. Cabinet has considered it. But there’s the question of land acquisition which must be fair, it must be equitable, it must be at the right price. It must be inclusive of the people. Nandigram was a very unfortunate incident of land acquisition but we must not confuse land acquisition with SEZs. They are two distinct things.



Speaking about the manner in which land acquisition is being handled by various State Governments, he said that he was personally in favour of giving farmers a stake in the development that comes up on their land in addition to the market price. He said the Government’s new National Resettlement and Rehabilitation Policy was likely to include this.





UPA to discuss SEZs on March 23



The UPA Coordination Committee is expected to meet on March 23 where the SEZ issue is likely to be discussed. Reports say that several of the UPA constituents are concerned over issues such as SEZs, likely to have an adverse fall out on popular opinion. RJD chief and Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav has called for restrictions on land for SEZs while condemning the violence at Nandigram. The RJD chief, who usually does not criticise the CPI(M), said that the West Bengal government has failed to exercise restraint while tackling the agitation against land acquisition. He said only fallow land or wasteland should be set aside for projects like SEZs.





CPI(M) politburo to meet at the month-end



Reports say that there is unease in the CPI(M) over the way in which the Nandigram issue erupted. The party’s politburo and central committee will meet for three days from March 31 to discuss the matter.



Publicly, party leaders might be saying that no land acquisition is being done in Nandigram and the violence is the handiwork of Trinamul and Maoists but a section within the party is asking why industrialisation in West Bengal has become more violent than in other states.







Be it a section of the CPI(M) or its allies, more and more leaders have started blaming the state Chief Minister for his blind resolve of industrialisation and the CPI(M) central leadership’s helplessness in containing him.



The politburo and central committee would also discuss why the party is repeatedly failing to get its view across to villagers. “If no land is being acquired, why is violence taking place? Instead of dealing with people politically, why were policemen allowed to go on the rampage?” he asked.



A senior CPI leader said, the continuing violence in West Bengal has started alienating the progressive sections from the party and the government.



“Look at the stature of individuals who have come out against the CPI(M). Their intentions should not be doubted. If things continue like this, non-CPI(M) Left parties, especially CPI (ML), could become the rallying point for progressive elements. That could be the beginning of the end,” he felt.