By Sujoy Dhar, IANS
Kolkata : Fresh violence Saturday in Nandigram in West Bengal claimed two lives, as marauding men of the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) allegedly fired on an unarmed procession of villagers from a rival group, prompting opposition Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee to resign as MP while state minister Kshiti Goswami offered to quit.
While Banerjee claimed the number of dead was close to 200, in Kolkata the intelligentsia rallied behind a fasting Medha Patkar and other human rights activists as they boycotted a state-organised film festival.
While Nandigram burned and protests rocked the state, a grim-faced Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya inaugurated the film festival at Nandan, the state-run film complex, in the presence of filmmakers Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen and others.
“The CPI-M may be ruling the state but the state belongs to us,” said filmmaker Aparna Sen sharing the dais with Patkar, Magsaysay award winner author Mahasweta Devi and host of other intellectuals.
West Bengal Minister Goswami, who belongs to the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), told IANS he wants to resign from the Left Front ministry.
“I don’t know if I would call this genocide. But this is definitely an expedition of killing, plunder and destruction. I don’t know what to say after what happened today. I have expressed my desire to resign and informed my party president about my decision,” Goswami said.
The gun battle in Nandigram, located in East Midnapore district about 150 km from here, killed two people and injured scores, according to officials.
“Two people, including a woman, were killed,” Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia told IANS.
A photojournalist covering the latest round of violence for a visual documentation of the carnage told IANS that a middle-aged villager, Sheikh Rizaul, was killed in the firefight. He also saw another woman, identified as Shymali Manna, brought dead to a hospital.
Both belong to the Bhumi Uchched Pratirodh Committee (BUPC), a Trinamool-backed group spearheading the movement against land acquisition. Kanojia confirmed both the names.
“One after another bullet-ridden body is being brought to the hospital. The police are inactive and using batons on people who demanded retrieval of the bodies since the CPI-M cadres are preventing them to collect the bodies,” said a shaken Bijoy Chowdhury, an award-winning photojournalist who said he had shot gruesome and heart-rending pictures.
Saturday’s violence began at around noon between activists of the CPI-M and the BUPC.
“The battle started in Mahespur area. The situation is serious,” East Midnapore Superintendent of Police S.S. Panda told IANS over phone from Nandigram.
Dipankar, a journalist of Tara Bangal news channel, was witness to the crossfire. “There is a hail of bullets. I can see an injured person being taken to hospital on a motorbike,” he told the channel.
Chowdhury said: “The situation is grave and the CPI-M is plundering village after village. You have to see to believe it. Bullets are flying everywhere and blood is splattered all over the place. The police are mute spectators.
“I can see four people with bullet wounds being taken to a Nandigram hospital,” said Chowdhury.
The CPI-M has barred the entry of media and human rights groups to Nandigram at different points.
“I have never seen such a situation. This is war,” said a shaken Chowdhury, who managed to give the CPI-M the slip and enter Nandigram.
While Banerjee announced her resignation and simultaneously threatened to launch crippling statewide protests from Monday, the echo of the unrest was felt in Kolkata, where leading citizens, including filmmakers Sen and Rituparno Ghosh, assembled at downtown Esplanade, near the state secretariat, and expressed solidarity with the people of Nandigram.
The Congress called for a 24-hour “general strike” Monday while the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) called for a shutdown the same day.
Meanwhile, CPI-M state secretary Biman Bose termed Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi’s statement on Nandigram as “unconstitutional and partisan”.
On Friday, Governor Gandhi had termed the manner in which the villages in Nandigram were allegedly recaptured by the CPI-M as “unlawful and unacceptable”.
“The ardour of Deepavali has been dampened in the whole state by the events in Nandigram. Several villages in Nandigram are oscillating from deepest gloom to panic,” Gandhi said in a nearly 700-word statement.
While Banerjee was quick to welcome the governor’s statement as courageous and a just observation, the CPI-M accused Gandhi of bias.
“He has crossed his constitutional rights,” said Bose.
Meanwhile, accepting the West Bengal government’s request for deployment of central paramilitary forces in Nandigram, the union home ministry Saturday sent a battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) to the state.
Over the past week, the CPI-M has launched a massive offensive against the BUPC in Nandigram and regained its lost ‘bases’. Their cadres entered village after village and allegedly torched houses belonging to the rival groups.
While the CPI-M maintains that peace is returning to Nandigram, rights activists say otherwise.
Violence in Nandigram has claimed 34 lives since January, when the region flared up over proposed land acquisition for a special economic zone (SEZ). The state government scrapped the plan later in the face of stiff resistance.
However, a turf battle continues in Nandigram between the CPI-M and the BUPC in the run-up to local body elections in May next year.