Singur farmers again try to damage Tata Motors wall

By IANS

Kolkata : About 200 farmers protesting land acquisition tried to damage the under-construction boundary wall of the upcoming Tata Motors small car factory in Singur in West Bengal for the second successive day Monday but police controlled the mob with tear gas and baton-charge.


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"It happened around 4 p.m. when they tried to reach the wall but we controlled the situation," Deputy Inspector General (Burdwan Range) Anuj Sharma told IANS.

"No one was seriously injured in the action," Sharma said as top police officials met in the state secretariat Writers' Buildings to discuss the situation.

Fresh tension erupted Sunday at the site, 40 km from here in Hooghly district, when about 200 farmers clashed with police to reclaim their land acquired for the project.

The farmers, led by Trinamool Congress leaders like Becharam Manna and legislator Rabindranath Bhattacharya, who are also leaders of the Singur Krishjami Raksha Committee, had marched towards the project site to break the boundary wall. Police fired tear gas shells and used batons to disperse them.

On Monday too, a large contingent of policemen deployed in the area prevented the farmers from causing any damage to the wall.

On May 8, about 200 farmers had gathered there and tried to destroy the boundary wall.

Singur has been chosen by Tata Motors for its small car project that will be spread over 997 acres of land.

The issue triggered a violent face-off between the Left Front government and the farmers led by civil society groups and parties like the Trinamool.

The latest flare-up has triggered fresh tension over the land acquisition.

After a political slugfest for weeks, the Left Front and the Trinamool arrived at a consensus Saturday to hold the much-awaited all-party peace meeting May 24 to restore normalcy in trouble-torn Nandigram.

The meeting aims to end a crisis that has claimed at least 21 lives since the January flare-up over a special economic zone.

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