It has been just a year and a half that the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government assumed power in West Bengal and the fault lines within the party rank and file are already beginning to show. Influential party legislators from Singur and Rashbehari Avenue, Kolkata - Rabindranath Bhattacharya and Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay have raised the banner of revolt.
The fact that West Bengal's new minister of state for agriculture Becharam Manna faced angry protests from land losers of Singur on Wednesday is a pointer. Singur is the holy ground where Trinamool Congress found its feet in the wake of the then CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's policy of forcible land acquisition in 2007 to facilitate setting up of a Tata Motors automobile plant. On Wednesday, November 29, 2012, many of those who had swelled the Trinamool file said they would not have joined the agitation against Tata Nano project had they known they would be left to their fate.
"We want money for the land taken away from us for the Nano car factory. We have waited for one and a half years (since TMC came to power in the state) to get the compensation, but we don't even hear about it anymore. We are now left begging," was the complaint of the people to Manna, a Trinamool Congress MLA from Haripal in the district who was closely associated with the Singur agitation.
The people were among the land losers who had neither signed nor taken any compensation for
01:03 PM, Nov 29, 2012
Kolkata: Trinamool Congress cadres are engaged in extortion and the Chief Minister knows about it, said a disgruntled West Bengal minister who played a key role in Mamata Banerjee's Singur agitation, days after he was shunted to a low key department. He also alleged that Trinamool Congress leaders were involved in cash-for-job scandals. "Mamata Banerjee is claiming her party won't be involved in extortion. But party cadres are extorting money...
07:27 PM, Nov 27, 2012
Burdwan: Burdwan may be the Rice Bowl of Bengal. However, its farmers are committing suicide. Here, rice is not a source of prosperity but of anguish. Spiralling debt has reportedly driven 16 farmers here to commit suicide in the past one year. Fifty-four-year-old Amiya Saha was one such farmer. The memories haunt his wife, but what hurts more is the continued government denials that something is amiss here. Says Jayanta...
04:07 PM, Jun 24, 2012
