Mamata Banerjee’s administration faces an agitation against land acquisition that has disturbing parallels with the Nandigram and Singur agitations which turned around her plummeting political fortunes 10 years ago.
THE spectre of violent agitation against land acquisition, of the kind that was instrumental in removing the Left Front from power in 2011, has now come to haunt Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. Bhangar in South 24 Parganas district turned into a battle zone when angry villagers clashed with the police as an agitation against the establishment of a power substation spiralled out of control. Two villagers were killed, allegedly in police firing, 30 policemen were injured, and more than 40 police vehicles were destroyed by a mob.
The simmering discontent over the setting up of the substation by Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) erupted onto the surface on January 17 as thousands of village residents took to the streets following the arrest of some of the leaders of the protest movement and alleged harassment by the police in several villages the previous night. Armed with sticks and bricks, they took on a large deployment of police and forced it to beat a retreat. Bringing back memories of the violent and prolonged land agitations of Nandigram and Singur that Mamata Banerjee herself spearheaded in 2007 against the then Left Front government’s land acquisition drive for industries, the people of Bhangar set up roadblocks using uprooted trees to keep the police and the administration out. Despite the State government giving its assurance that work on the power grid would be stalled with immediate effect, the situation was tense for over a week. This was the Trinamool government’s first taste of a mass protest in rural Bengal after assuming power in 2011.
This story is from the February 17, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the February 17, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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