People's Democracy

TRINAMUL-NAXALITE VIOLENCE CONTINUES

LF Calls For State-Level All-Party Meeting On Nandigram

B Prasant

BENGAL Left Front has called for a state-level all-party meeting to restore peace and amity at Nandigram. The mechanism of the all-party meeting including the fixation of the venue and date will be looked after jointly by Left Front chairman Biman Basu and senior Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh.

On May 7, the Bengal Left Front asked the east Midnapore unit of the LF to take all effective measures to initiate political and social processes at Nandigram towards peace and restoration of normalcy, ending violence. The Bengal Left Front subsequently went through the preparatory phase of the all-party meeting and the decision was taken by the Left Front as a whole to hold instead a state-level all-party meeting.

The Bengal opposition has communicated doubts about the efficacy of any district-level all-party meeting for Nandigram. The opposition believes that a state-level meeting would be the answer to the imbroglio. The Bengal Left Front has agreed and has thus called for such a meeting. Later addressing the media Biman Basu clarified that there was no such thing as a ‘mini front’ within the front and that the term was an innovation of the media itself. There is a possibility that the all-party meeting would be held on May 26. The Trinamul Congress has called upon the Forward Bloc leader to organise the meeting on that day.

Elsewhere, even as the Trinamul Congress leaders spoke of an all-party meeting, the miscreants in the pay and protection of the outfit organised fresh assaults on a series of villages in the Nandigram blocks. The first attack took place at Ramchak village from where the Trinamul Congress hoodlums kidnapped Sudarshan Padua whose brother is a former Panchayat member, and beat him up mercilessly. Earlier a number of villages at Satengabari and Ranichak were attacked and houses looted. The Bahargunj relief camp was again subjected to an armed attack.

Deep into the night of May 11, Trinamul Congress goondas, all of them heavily armed, attacked a police jeep on patrol at Dihi Kamalpur, and broke the front glass pane and the window panes. They later cut a deep ditch across two metalled roads nearby, effectively cutting off the area from the surrounding localities. They then proceeded to threaten women who cook for the inmates of nearby relief camps and threatened to molest them.

MLA ATTACKED ONCE AGAIN

Trinamul goons once again attacked local MLA belonging to CPI, Ilyias Mohammad on the night of May 16. The attack took place at a village called Tarachandpur and the seriously injured MLA has been moved to a hospital. Left Front chairman Biman Basu has condemned this vicious attack on the public representative.

It may be recalled that Ilyias was injured attacked during a Trinamul Congress attack on the Left Front rally at Nandigram on April 27.

Meanwhile, proceeding towards Tekhali, the Trinamul Congress goons set fire to dozen-odd hutments after looting them thoroughly. People at the relief camps were vociferous against the constant lobbing of country-made bombs and incendiaries during nights at Nandigram and surrounding areas. News has reached us that from the late evening of May 15, the Trinamul Congress has chosen to ‘keep ready for assault’ four columns of armed hoods at the following points of Nandigram, all the localities are Trinamul Congress strongholds: Maheshpur, Satengabari, Sonachura, and Jellingham. The columns have between them nearly 100 guns and pistols, innumerable bombs, and sharp, cutting weapons. The aim is to ‘prevent the police from entering Nandigram.’

A preliminary clash with the police occurred in the small hours on the morning of May 16 when about a 100 armed Trinamul Congress goons whose ranks included anti-socials imported from Garchakraberia and Sonachura as well as Khejuri, tried to push through a police cordon towards the Tekhalibazaar area and the relief camp there. For the first time after March 14, the police physically intervened, lathi-charged and managed to disperse the goons. Four policemen were injured, two seriously.

The number of police camps has been steadily increased over the past two months and this has made the Trinamul Congress leaders press the panic button. Local support for the Trinamul Congress-Naxalite-SUCI’s acts of commission has touched a new low of late.

MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED

In the meanwhile, the Bengal governor and the Bengal chief minister were approached by the leadership of the east Midnapore district Left Front with data in the form of memoranda of what was happening yet at Nandigram. Over the past four months, nearly five thousand people have been made homeless by the Trinamul Congress-Naxalite-SUCI at Nandigram itself, not to speak of surrounding and abutting localities.

Included in the ranks of the ousted people are over three thousands of women, children, and babies who are deprived of even a modicum of milk. The elderly and the sick are at a great handicap. When fresh refugees crowd the relief camps, there is no shelter for them under the open sky and it has started to rain often in Midnapore. Every night bombs are routinely thrown at the relief camps at Tekhali, Bhangaberia, Ranichak, Bahargunj, and Sher Khan Chak. Shots are fired in the direction of the ousted people.

All developmental programme in the localities affected have come to a standstill. Schools remain closed. All mid-day meal schemes have to be kept suspended. People are deprived of health, education, and peace. Crores of rupees worth of rural development schemes is kept in abeyance including electrification projects and water supply schemes. Both the governor and the chief minister gave a patient hearing to the district LF leaders whose ranks included Kanu Sahu, Ashok Guria, Nirmal Jana (CPI-M), Amrita Maiti (RSP), Chittadas Thakur (CPI), Gopal Maiti (FB), Hrishikesh Poida (DSP), and Ranajit Manna (Socialist Party).

A delegation of Bengal AIDWA leadership met chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee recently to request him to ensure that all the people ousted from their places at Nandigram be allowed to return home before the rainy season sets in. A memorandum was submitted by the Bengal AIDWA leaders who included Shyamali Gupta, Minati Ghosh, Rekha Goswami, Banani Biswas, Ramala Chakraborti, Tamalika Panda Seth, Bilashibala Sahis et al. A women’s rally would be organised subsequently at the Haldia-Nandigram area by the AIDWA.

GUN RUNNING, WEAPONS’ TRAINING AT NANDIGRAM

The CPI(M) supporters who have continued amidst adversities to cling to their village hutments at Sonachura and Gokulnagar are witness to the armed preparations in full swing at Nandigram under the aegis of the Trinamul Congress, the Naxalites, and the SUCI. Forcible collection of subscription is going on to fund the arms inflow.

At present, arms training is being imparted to around 150 Trinamul Congress goons at Kalicharanpur, Gokulnagar, and Sonachura villages. The experts are mostly Maoists or people who received arms’ training from the Maoists. Their ranks include the Maoists ‘Foren’ Sardar and the former Army jawan Aditya Bera.

A target practice session is organised regularly at a cove on the Jellingham char area by the side of the river Haldi. Bullets and guns – of various calibres and ranges – are imported via ‘relief convoys’ of jeeps, trucks, and cars, and through ferries and motor-driven launches. Trawlers come from the Orissa coast carrying large caches of bullets.

It is alleged that the convoy that accompanied the Trinamul Congress leadership for the April 25 meeting, comprising 13 buses, 22 jeeps, and eight half-trucks, carried a considerable supply of arms — one recalls how the Trinamul Congress-Naxalites started a large-scale and armed attacks on the villagers at Nandigram and Sonachura from April 29. Recently, Pradesh Congress leader Adhir Chaudhuri has carried ‘relief’ to Nandigram in a convoy of more than a hundred jeeps and cars. Garchakraberia is reported to be the centre where most of the arms are kept piled up to be used as opportunity arises or commands are forthcoming.