Mamata Banerjee on Monday said she would not take any lesson from anyone on who all were behind the anti-land acquisition movement in Nandigram in an indirect snub of Trinamul Congress turncoat Suvendu Adhikari’s claim that he was the one who had led the 2007 agitation.
The movement was launched after the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government had announced its plan to acquire land for a chemical hub in Nandigram, East Midnapore.
“I will not take any lesson from anyone on who all were behind the Nandigram movement,” the chief minister said at a Trinamul rally in Nandigram.
Over the last few months — both in the run up to his formal switch to the BJP and then after taking the plunge on December 19 — Suvendu held several programmes in which he pitched himself as the main force behind the struggle that catapulted Mamata into power in the 2011 Assembly elections.
The former Trinamul minister has also asked questions at public meetings on why everyone forgot Nandigram whereas he continued standing by those who fought the movement.
Even on Monday, Suvendu said she visited Nandigram after five years, since December 21, 2015, just because of the ensuing polls.
“We didn’t forget anyone... I know the entire Nandigram. My soul was connected with this place and this connection will always stay,” said Mamata, swatting away Suvendu’s claim that only he had stood by the families of the martyrs or those who had gone missing during the land-related strife.
In an attempt to prove that she cared for the victims’ families, the chief minister said during her speech that she would soon announce a monthly pension scheme for the victims’ families.
Earlier in the day, Mamata had presided over a short programme in which family members of 10 people, who had gone missing after the alleged recapture of Nandigram by CPM goons on November 10, 2007, were given Rs 10 lakh each by the state government.
During her 45-minute address — longer than the usual duration of her speech — Mamata dwelt extensively on how closely she was involved with the movement.
“I still remember March 14, the day 14 people were killed... I was on my way to Nandigram and they (the then administration and CPM goons) tried their best to prevent me from going. The then governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, had called me and urged me to return to Calcutta saying that I might be killed,” the chief minister recounted the heady days of the Nandigram movement.
“Listening to him, I went to a guest house in Kolaghat, but they put buses on the way to prevent us from going,” she added, before explaining how she rode pillion on a party leader’s motorbike to reach Tamluk Hospital to meet the injured.
Mamata also rolled out a chronology of how the land acquisition movement had shaped up in Bengal under he leadership as she recounted her stir in Singur, followed by a 26-day hunger strike at Esplanade in Calcutta and then the Nandigram movement.
She drew parallels between the Nandigram movement and the ongoing farmers’ movement in the national capital region before attacking the BJP.
“In Nandigram, the attempt was to take away the land of farmers. In Punjab, Haryana, the BJP is trying to take away the produce of the farmers... We are firmly with the farmers and supporting their movement,” she said before adding that the movement would force the Centre to repeal the contentious farm bills.
