By IANS,
Kolkata: Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee Sunday announced a new suburban train, Andolan Express, which will ply between West Bengal’s Singur and Howrah station from Aug 1 this year.
“The Indian Railways will introduce a new train from Aug 1 which will ply between Hooghly district’s Singur to Howrah station everyday,” Banerjee said while inaugurating the computerised reservation counter at New Alipur station here.
The introduction of the train appears to be Banerjee’s way of paying tribute to the anti-land acquisition movement of Singur, 40 km from here, that forced the auto major Tata Motors to shift its Nano car factory to Sanand in Gujarat last year and also reversed the party’s declining electoral fortunes.
The Singur movement, which started in mid-2006 following the project announcement by the state’s ruling Left Front soon after it swept the assembly polls, helped the Trinamool to decimate the Left Front in last year’s rural body polls and April-May parliament elections.
Banerjee staged a 26-day long hunger strike in Kolkata in 2006 protesting against the forcible land acquisition by the state government in Singur, and later travelled to the rural pocket and laid siege on the factory for 14 days last year.
After the Singur movement, followed by a similar agitation in Nandigram, the land acquisition agitation snowballed into a major issue in the state and brought handsome rewards to the Trinamool at the hustings.