By IANS,
Kolkata : The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) will join the central government if the situation so demands after the Lok Sabha polls, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here Sunday.
“If the situation so demands, we will join (the ministry). I don’t know whether I will join, but my party will join,” Bhattacharjee said during an interaction with the city’s intellectuals.
In an effort to woo the intellectuals, many of whom had drifted away from the government after the violence in Nandigram, Bhattacharjee said police would not have been sent to that area in East Midnapore on March 14, 2007, had he known that they would have to fire on the people.
“Does anybody want to willingly fire? The police had not gone to Nandigram for three months. Had we known that they would have to fire, we would not have deployed them even after six months,” he said.
Peasants, supported by the Trinamool Congress, had launched violent protests over the Left Front government’s efforts to acquire land for a chemical hub project. The agitators dug roads, fell trees and did not allow police and the administration to enter the area for months.
When police were deployed on March 14, 2007, people put up resistance. Fourteen people, mostly peasants, died in the police firing, triggering waves of protests among the civil society.
Referring to many leftist intellectuals turning against the government post Nandigram, Bhattacharjee said: “I would have been happy to see some faces, whose minds are now cluttered with questions. I know from reports that there are doubts, debates and suspicions (among a section of the intellectuals).
“I would have felt great if I had come face to face with them,” he added.