By IANS,
Singur : Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh Sunday apologised for favouring West Bengal’s ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) earlier on the farmers’ agitation in Singur against land acquisition and expressed his party’s support for Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.
“I am sorry that I was with the CPI-M. I was given wrong information by CPI-M leaders Prakash and Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury on (violent protests in) Singur and Nandigram. They said it was not a movement of farmers but of naxalite activists,” Singh said.
He was addressing protesters who launched an indefinite agitation outside the Tata Motors small car factory at Singur in Hooghly district.
Terming farmers as “landlords” or the actual owners of land, Singh said the government is merely their “security guard”.
“The government’s duty is to protect the farmers and common people. It’s not the Tatas but the masses that vote the government. But the West Bengal government has forgotten that.
“The state’s main opposition Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is not alone in this movement. All the 56 Samajwadi Party MPs – 40 in the Lok Sabha and 16 in the Rajya Sabha – belong to Banerjee. She will have full support from us in her movement,” he said.
“I welcome Banerjee to come to Utter Pradesh and join hands with the Samajwadi Party for the anti-land acquisition movement there as well.”
The Trinamool Congress-backed Krishijami Jiban Jibika Raksha Committee has called for the indefinite agitation at the factory site from Sunday, asking the Left Front government to return 400 acres of farmland, out of the total 997.11 acres, taken for building ancillary industries adjacent to the Tata plant.