By IANS,
Kolkata : Professionals from the information technology (IT) sector of the city at the satellite township of Salt Lake took out a procession Wednesday in favour of industrialisation and in protest against the insult that IT employees experienced earlier during the day at Singur.
Town Hall – a Kolkata-based organisation of IT professionals, engineers and teachers – tried to meet Mamata Banerjee at Singur Wednesday morning but were allegedly threatened and turned away by Trinamool leaders.
Banerjee is leading an indefinite agitation at Singur where auto major Tata Motors is building a factory to produce the world’s cheapest car Nano.
“People in the IT sector took out this silent procession in the city to protest against the insult we had experienced in the morning and to make clear our pro-industrilisation stand,” Town Hall convenor Jhuma Mukherjee told IANS.
She herself is a software engineer working in the IT hub of the city.
Earlier in the day, Town Hall members who went to Singur to voice their concern regarding industrialization were threatened to leave the place immediately.
“I, along with two other members of our organisation, tried to meet Banerjee to impress upon her the need to make the situation congenial so that the project can once again became operational,” Mukherjee said.
“We were stopped from going to the dais by the people over there. Ultimately when we managed to go closer to the makeshift podium and requested Banerjee to heed our pleas, we were asked to leave the spot by Trinamool leaders,” she said.
“A Trinamool leader even threatened us with physical assault. We are common people. We don’t have any political banner. So, we got frightened and left the place,” Mukherjee told reporters.
Trinamool and several other opposition parties in the state, along with a section of local farmers, have been laying an indefinite siege near the factory gate since Aug 24 demanding that the government return 400 acres taken ‘forcibly’ from ‘unwilling peasants’ for the small car plant.
A total of 997.11 acres was acquired for the Tata Motors small car project in Singur.