A pale hoarding hangs outdoors the home of Rabindranath Bhattacharya in Singur. It reveals him with Becharam Manna, his aide who labored tirelessly with the intention to guarantee Bhattacharya’s win within the constituency within the 2011 West Bengal meeting elections. Bhattacharya and Manna had been two of the distinguished native faces of an agitation towards land acquisition in Hooghly district’s Singur.
A decade later, Manna is the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s candidate from the seat. His spouse is a TMC nominee in neighbouring Haripal, which Manna received in 2011 and 2016.
Bhattacharya, or Mastermoshai (as he’s popularly known as), is seething in anger. After all, he received Singur 4 occasions in a row (from 2001 to 2016) on TMC ticket. The 88-year-old has now joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and can contest towards Manna.
“I want revenge. How badly she has treated me! I can never forgive her,” Bhattacharya instructed News18, referring to chief minister Mamata Banerjee and rejecting the argument that he was denied ticket due to his age.
Some 150 kilometres from Nandigram, the place the core political motion in Bengal is centred, one other attention-grabbing electoral battle is unfolding in Singur, the location of a raging land agitation from 2006 to 2008. Though misplaced within the din over Nandigram, this one too has all of the makings of a blockbuster, and is much like the high-voltage combat in Nandigram in some elements.
Both Singur and Nandigram have symbolic values for CM Banerjee; extra so at a time when she is going through the stiffest electoral problem for the primary time in her decade-long rule. Massive land agitations towards the earlier Left authorities in Singur and Nandigram catapulted the TMC to energy in 2011, with Banerjee taking on the reason for the protesters.
Like Nandigram, the place Banerjee faces her lieutenant-turned-rival Suvendu Adhikari, the battle in Singur, too, encompasses a disgruntled, influential native chief who has crossed over to the BJP, and is now brazenly difficult his former get together. No matter what, the TMC won’t prefer to lose both of the 2 seats. For the battle right here isn’t for votes alone; it’s about status and bragging rights.
Manna is aware of that. “Didi (as Banerjee is popularly called) did say she would accommodate everyone who didn’t get ticket this time. He (Bhattacharya) could have waited. How can he betray our cause?…we all fought together.”
In 2006, hassle erupted within the space after the then Left authorities determined to accumulate 997 acres of land to arrange the Nano automotive manufacturing facility by the Tatas. About 6,000 households feared they might lose their agricultural land and, ultimately, their livelihood, whereas additionally claiming that they weren’t being given sufficient compensation.
In got here Banerjee, then a firebrand opposition chief. She marched there — Bhattacharya and Manna by her aspect — in help of these protesting towards the automotive manufacturing facility. She and a crew of TMC leaders even camped there for days; a makeshift stage got here up as the primary agitation website subsequent to the freeway within the neighborhood. Today, the construction of the deserted manufacturing facility is seen to these passing via that freeway connecting Kolkata to different south Bengal cities akin to Bardhaman and Durgapur. It was due to the agitation that the manufacturing facility was shelved and a invoice handed to return about 400 of the 997 acres of land to farmers.
It is strictly the place the decision will get cut up. While a piece of villagers is completely satisfied that they bought their land again — Singur primarily grows potato and rice — others are nonetheless awaiting industries and improvement.
“We are farmers; we are not educated. There is nothing else we can do. So we are happy that land and agriculture is given important in Singur. Our vote is for Didi…what Mastermoshai did was betrayal,” says a farmer, sitting beneath a tree adjoining to one of many plots as soon as earmarked for the Nano manufacturing facility.
Tukai Mahato agrees. “He’s 88 and a four-time MLA. Why this desire to contest again? He has joined the BJP now. It’s like getting married in old age.”
Gopal Kundu, too, appears crucial of Bhattacharya, whereas additionally touching upon the protests over three central agricultural legal guidelines. “If he was part of the Singur agitation in 2006, how can he be part of a party which we know doesn’t care for the farmers?” he asks.
Even those that wish to transfer past the land agitation right here agree that Banerjee proved to be a “saviour” for them a decade in the past.
Bhattacharya is aware of that. “I may not be with the TMC, but this much I still maintain: Mamata Banerjee feels for the farmers. She has been honest to the cause and the issue.” On the agricultural legal guidelines which have triggered protests amongst a piece of farmers, he says: “I have no idea about all this. I am only concerned about Singur.”
A giant a part of the talk in Singur centres round land, however there are those that search a brand new starting however don’t understand how and the place to begin.
“I don’t want to be a farmer. I want to work in a factory. I wish I could work in Kolkata or Delhi. But my parents are very old. I have to be around,” says a 19-year-old man in Singur’s Gopalpur. He rues the shortage of employment within the space.
Mohan Beg, 60, feels sufficient is sufficient. “We can’t live in the past. We were told other industries will come up in place of the Nano factory. I am still waiting. How many jobs can land give? We have lost out. No land, no factories and no jobs.”
Singur and Banerjee each face a dilemma. Land must be protected. But the necessity of the hour is to maneuver on. In Singur, the balancing act is what takes the centre stage on this context.
