Leaders of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha, the farmers’ body spearheading the national protests against the Centre’s three agriculture laws, will address a rally on March 13 in East Midnapore’s Nandigram, where chief minister Mamata Banerjee is taking on Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP.
“We have been invited by a group of Sikh sympathisers from Bengal to campaign in favour of our movement at four places in the state, including Nandigram and Singur. Some of us will be participating in these programmes,” said Hannan Mollah, CPM leader and general secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha.
“From March 11 to 14, we will be in Bengal. There will be multiple programmes across the state and we will participate in them,” said Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Balbir Singh Rajewal.
Nandigram has regained political significance in Bengal politics prior to the Assembly polls after chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that she would contest from the seat. Following the announcement, the BJP decided to field former Trinamul minister Suvendu Adhikari against Banerjee. The Left Front-Congress-ISF alliance is yet to declare the candidate in Nandigram.
Both Nandigram and Singur had been the sites of historic peasant movements and played pivotal roles in Mamata’s accession to power in 2011. After Adhikari switched to the BJP in December 2020, Mamata decided to contest from Nandigram.
The meetings at Nandigram and Singur have been organised by the West Bengal Kisan Coordination Committee, an association of the representatives from Bengal’s Sikh community who sympathise with the farmers’ protests. The body will hold two other rallies, one at Calcutta and another at Asansol.
Although the meetings are being pitched as apolitical, both Mollah and Rajewal said they would be campaigning against the BJP in Bengal, as they had been doing in rest of the country.
“We will be requesting the people to punish the BJP and its allies because they have not been accepting the genuine demands of the farmers for the past three months,” Rajewal said. “We will not be campaigning for any party in particular,” he added.
Sources in Trinamul feel the farmers’ campaign at places like Nandigram and Singur would only help Mamata in her battle against the BJP. Although the Left-Congress-ISF alliance has come up as a strong third contender, the primary tussle is still between Trinamul and the saffron camp.
“If farmer leaders can successfully convince the peasants to work against the BJP, the consolidation of votes in favour of Trinamul will increase,” a Trinamul leader said.
This probability has, however, sparked a controversy amongst the agitators themselves. Leaders like Yogendra Yadav and CPM’s Mollah are unwilling to let Trinamul reap benefits from their agitation, sources said. Hence, some of them like Yadav might decide against participating in the Nandigram rally.
Rakesh Tikait, another face of the farmers’ agitation and spokesperson for the Bharatiya Kisan Union, might be present at Nandigram. One of the organisers said while initially it was decided that the meeting at Nandigram would be held on March 13 morning followed by the programme in Calcutta, the events were later swapped since Tikait would be reaching Calcutta on March 13 morning.
“We wanted Tikait to be at Nandigram. Hence, we pushed it to later in the day,” the source said.
On March 12, leaders of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha will address a news conference in Calcutta and participate in a tractor rally from Esplanade to Ramlila Maidan. At Ramlila Maidan, they will address a Kisan Maha Panchayat on lines of those being held by the Morcha in several north Indian states.
On March 13, they will address one meeting at Calcutta in the morning and another in Nandigram in the evening. On March 14, similar meetings will be held in Singur and Asansol.
