By IANS
New Delhi : The West Bengal government has approached the Supreme Court seeking deletion of harsh strictures against it in a Calcutta High Court judgement on police firing in Nandigram earlier this year, in which 14 people were killed.
The government in its petition filed Tuesday has forcefully defended the police action on March 14, saying the police personnel resorted to firing only after all other measures failed to contain the situation. It also challenged the compensation amount the high court ordered to be paid to the affected families.
Addressing a press meet in New Delhi Tuesday, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya admitted the Nandigram episode was an “administrative and political failure”.
He also regretted his remarks that those opposing land acquisition in Nandigram had been “paid back in the same coin”.
The high court on Nov 16 indicted the government, terming the police firing in trouble-torn Nandigram as “wholly unconstitutional and unjustifiable”, and directed the administration to pay Rs.500,000 as compensation to the family of each of the victims.
The state government in its petition has contended that the high court had hastily reached its conclusion in terming the police firing as “unconstitutional and unjustified”, without evaluating all records placed before it by the state, detailing various steps taken to contain the situation in Nandigram.
While seeking deletion of the high court’s strictures against it, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M)-led government also challenged the order to pay compensation to the kin of the victims.
The state government pleaded to the apex court to constitute a committee to fix the damages to be paid to the victims.
The petition is likely to come up for hearing next week.
East Midnapore district’s Nandigram, about 150 km from Kolkata, has seen repeated flare-ups since January when villagers there protested a move to acquire farmlands for industry. While the plan was scrapped, 35 people have died in political clashes in the past 11 months.