Click to play videoJamshedpur: The Singur fire has spread beyond West Bengal with Jharkhand seeing a similar situation. On Thursday, officers of a steel company in the area were mobbed and paraded around the village.
It's a humiliation that the surveyors from the Bushan Power & Steel Company would rather forget. They were scouting land for a factory in the Potka district of Jamshedpur, when villagers angry at the idea of giving up their land, captured them, blackened their faces and paraded them through the village.
“People are coming through illegal means and forcing us part with land, nobody is ready to give the land,” says Leader, Vishtapan Virodhi Morcha , Kumar Chandra Mardi.
“We had only come to survey the area,” says an engineer Yusuf Ahmed.
Members of the ruling Jharkhand Mukti Morcha also reportedly took part in the attack on the engineers. Far from condemning this vigilantism, Jharkhand Chief Minister and JMM leader, Shibu Soren, has come out in defence of the villagers.
"The surveyors have to take permission from the respective municipal authorities before surveying a land. They don’t have any written commitment from us, then how would you expect the villagers to not react," says Jharkhand Chief Minister, Shibu Soren.
In the last four years the Jharkhand government has signed Memorandums Of Understanding (MoU) with industrialists like the Mittals, the TATAs and the Jindals.
Though 50 MoUs have been signed, only half a dozen companies have started work. Land disputes in the region have stalled the rest.
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