Talks to end a 10-year impasse over a proposed coal mining project in Birbhum’s Loba failed on Friday after most of the land-losing families boycotted a meeting with Damodar Valley Corporation (DVC) officials following a last-minute change in venue.
Only around 150 of the 5,000-odd landlosers attended the meeting — to fix the price of land and the compensation package — at Dubrajpur, 14km from Loba, with senior DVC and block-level officials.
The landlosers had wanted the meeting to be held at the place where a clash had broken out in 2012.
At least six persons had suffered bullet injuries and a dozen police officers had been wounded in a fierce clash between protesters and the police over the seizure of an earth-moving machine by the agitators.
Sources in the administration said the venue was shifted on Thursday evening to avoid the “Loba dharna manch”, the epicentre of the agitation. Although the dharna has long been called off, the Loba Krishi Jomi Rakshya (agricultural land protection) Committee wanted the meeting to be held there because of its symbolic significance.
“The committee had demanded that the meeting be held at the site of their agitation. As it was the first such meeting (in a long time), we tried to keep a distance from the place of violence. If another agitation or law-and-order trouble takes place there before the 2021 Assembly polls, everyone will have to face consequences,” said a senior official on the condition of anonymity.
Birbhum district magistrate Moumita Godara Basu said the DVC did not want to attend the meeting at the place proposed by the committee. “So, we shifted the venue. Besides, it is against decorum to send government officials to such a dharna manch,” she said.
The DVC is set to purchase around 3,600 acres in Loba to set up an open-cast coalmine.
Problems cropped up again earlier this month when a meeting was first called in Loba on November 13. However, it was cancelled and the meeting was rescheduled for November 22 on the Loba Kalibari premises. The farmers demanded that the meeting be held at the site of the 2012 protest. The committee was formed in 2007 when the coalmine in Loba was first pitched as a joint venture of the DVC and Bengal Emta.
“We wanted the meeting at our dharna manch…. We can’t forget that six farmers were injured in police firing in 2012. We don’t want to listen to the DVC if they don’t come to our venue,” said Joydip Majumder, the committee secretary.
On Friday, the 150-odd farmers at the meeting protested and claimed more money after Sudhir Mukherjee, deputy chief engineer (mechanical) of the DVC, declared that the utility would pay Rs 14 lakh an acre for the land. The farmers demand at least four times the price cited by the DVC.
Court angry
Calcutta High Court on Friday expressed dissatisfaction at the state government’s failure to implement an order to take steps to stop coal smuggling from the Raniganj-Asansol mining belt and to evict squatters allegedly engaged in the illegal trade.
In its earlier order, issued two months ago, a division bench headed by Chief Justice T.B.N. Radhakrishnan had directed the state to appoint an officer and to provide him with adequate police personnel to prevent coal pilfering and evict the squatters from near mines.
