State purchasing land instead of acquiring land

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090112/jsp/bengal/story_10377806.jsp

State to buy plots from farmers

BARUN GHOSH

Calcutta, Jan. 11: The government has decided to purchase 50 acres in Bhangar directly from farmers to set up a state university for minorities, having learnt bitter lessons on land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. The government is stepping with caution on the land “purchase” also because Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress controls the zilla parishad of South 24-Parganas, were Bhangar is located. “Our bitter experiences in Singur and Nandigram have compelled us to go for direct purchase of land from farmers for the proposed Aliah University. All of us know that circumstances have changed in the past few months,” land and land reforms minister Abdur Rezzak Mollah said today. He said chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had agreed it would be “unwise” to acquire the land at this juncture. With the Lok Sabha election round the bend, the government would not like to anger the strong minority presence in Bhangar, barely 5km from Calcutta. “Resistance would have come from land losers, backed by Trinamul, if we had gone for acquisition. Keeping this in mind, we are directly talking to farmers,” Mollah said. The plan to build the state-run university for minorities was announced by the government in 2007 but since then it has had no luck in getting the land. An internal report by the CPM’s South 24-Parganas unit has warned the government against acquiring land there. “We are not in a comfortable position in South 24-Parganas after we lost the panchayat polls. Also, Bhangar... is represented by a Trinamul legislator. We have sent the report to the state committee,” a district committee member said. Arabul Haque, Trinamul MLA from Bhangar, said his party would not object if the land was bought straight from the farmers. “We are opposed to forcible acquisition. The move to buy land directly from farmers is welcome,” he said. Asked about the price, a minority affairs department official said it would be finalised after talking to the farmers. “They told us they will part with the land if it is purchased from them,” he said.

The ruling party fails to win polls in Nandigram

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090110/jsp/bengal/story_10369651.jsp

Trinamul bags Nandi by 39000 margin

OUR BUREAU

Calcutta Jan. 9: The Trinamul Congress won the Nandigram Assembly bypoll today by a margin of over 39,000 votes, suggesting that the Left had been unable to stem the slide, let alone narrow the gap, after the panchayat elections. The margin of defeat is one of the highest the Left has suffered since it came to power. For Trinamul, its victory by 39,549 votes is the highest margin by which any party has won Nandigram since it first voted in 1951. Trinamul fielded Feroza Bibi, a 60-year-old homemaker who lost her son in the police firing on March 14, 2007. To the people of Nandigram, Feroza was the “Martyr’s mother”. After the results, Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee said: “Nandigram symbolises the beginning of the end (of Left rule).” The result also underlines “people’s craving for a change of guard at Writers’ Buildings.... We will now work towards ousting the CPM from there”, she said. The CPM, which had blamed Trinamul for “low-key terror” during the election, was in the mood for “introspection”. “It (the result) calls for introspection,” said state CPM secretary Biman Bose from Kochi, where the party’s central committee was meeting. “We are going to find out whether our campaign in the area had flaws or if we failed in the face of Trinamul-sponsored terror,” he said. But Manju Kumar Majumdar, the state secretary of the CPI whose candidate Paramananda Bharati lost, blamed Trinamul’s “raw terror”. “Raw terror won in Nandigram, not Trinamul,” he said. Since 2007, Nandigram has been the theatre of political violence when the government tried to acquire farmland for a chemical hub that it ultimately had to shift from the area. Observers said the margin was a pointer that the Left had been unable to stop its votes from shrinking since the panchayat election last May when Trinamul wrested control in Nandigram. Mamata’s party is expected to make the CPM struggle to retain the Tamluk Lok Sabha seat, under which Nandigram falls. The CPM’s Lakshman Seth holds the seat, having beaten Trinamul’s Subhendu Adhikary. The results of two more Assembly seats — Para in Purulia and Sujapur in Malda — were announced today. In the predominantly tribal Para, the CPM’s Minu Bauri won by 40,787 votes but the significance of the result lay in the emergence of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha as a competing force. Its candidate Charan Bauri got 22,850 votes. A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury’s niece, Mausam Noor, retained family bastion Sujapur. Her mother Ruby Noor, who died, was the previous Congress MLA. Mausam, who practises law in Calcutta, trounced her rival, the CPM’s Haji Ketabuddin, by over 21,000 votes. In all the seats, the winners were women. Also, all are debutantes on the political stage. Two of them — Feroza and Mausam — are from the minority community, while Minu Bauri is a tribal.

Farmers set to lose land for the Andal aerotropolis demand better compensation

The Telegraph Farmers step up land demand http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090107/jsp/bengal/story_10353797.jsp

Durgapur, Jan. 6: Villagers set to lose land for the Andal aerotropolis project today formed a farmers’ committee that demanded developed plots in the project site measuring half the area of the land given up by each holder. That would mean a farmer giving up two cottahs would have to be given one cottah in the airport city area with all facilities like roads, electricity and water supply. Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited, which is handling the project, had offered the farmers between Rs 7.5 lakh and Rs 11.24 lakh an acre depending on the fertility and location of the plot. The farmers were also to get a cottah inside the project area for every bigha acquired (20 cottahs make a bigha). But there was a ceiling on the land-for-land offer: no farmer would get more than six cottahs. The new demand — of more land in the project area — came after the farmers from 12 mouzas formed the Krishi Jomi Jiban Jibika Raksha Committee, at the helm of which is the Trinamul Congress. The SUCI and Naxalite outfits are believed to be involved as well. “We welcome the project but we want half of our lost land in developed condition in the project area. The project promoter, Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited, has offered us one cottah against every bigha acquired but we don’t accept it,” said Kalobaran Mondal, the committee president and a former Trinamul president of Andal block. Mondal, 54, a transporter, owns around 20 acres of single-crop land in Tamla, identified for acquisition. “We will meet the Burdwan district magistrate tomorrow and place our new demand before him,” said Susanta Dutta, a spokesperson of the outfit. On December 24 last year, the villagers had demanded direct talks with Bengal Aerotropolis and demanded jobs and shares as promised by the Jindals in Salboni. The committee will also place its demand for direct talks with the developers. Singapore’s Changi Airport International is said to have picked up a 26 per cent stake in the project. The final deal has not been signed, though. The farmers are not the only bother for the project’s developers. Coal India objected to the project saying the site would block mining. The state government has written to the civil aviation ministry denying the allegation. The Rs 10,000-crore aerotropolis needs 3,500 acres. Most of the land in the area is either single-crop or barren. 900 reject Andal offer http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090112/jsp/bengal/story_10377637.jsp Burdwan, Jan. 11: Over 900 land holders have refused to part with their plots for the Andal aerotropolis in Burdwan. Sources in the district land acquisition collectorate said objections from 929 villagers from eight mouzas in Andal block have been received in two lots since last Wednesday, though Burdwan district magistrate Manish Jain claimed the papers “hadn’t reached his office”. The government issued a notification for land acquisition on December 11 last year. The notification, for the first phase of the Rs 10,000-crore project, was for the acquisition of 2,364 acres spread over the eight mouzas. In all, 3,500 acres would be required. Most of the land in the area is single-crop or barren. But villagers allege the administration had not spoken to them before putting up the notice. Raju Roy, who filed an objection on his one-acre plot, said he wasn’t against the project but insisted the government should have spoken to him first. “The government has fixed the price of my land after consulting political parties, not me. Why should someone else decide the price of my plot? It is unjustified. I want to talk directly to the project promoter,” said Roy, who is a Trinamul panchayat member in Andal. Ananda Prasad Layek, who owns 3.18 acres in Bhadur mouza, said: “The project is being built by a private company which can speak to us and settle the compensation. Why is the government coming between? I will not sell at less than Rs 18 lakh per acre.” The government has offered Rs 7.5 lakh to Rs 11.24 lakh an acre, depending on the plot’s fertility and location. The compensation package, which offered a land-for-land scheme for the first time other than cash, vocational training and other reimbursements to 19,000 villagers, was accepted by all major political parties, except Trinamul, which did not attend any of the 19 all-party meetings. The objections came after a demand by a farmers’ committee last Tuesday for developed plots inside the project area measuring half the area of land given up by each holder. Trinamul, though, seems to have distanced itself from the farmers’ attempts to get higher compensation. State party president Subrata Bakshi said: “We are not part of any agitation where farmers have agreed to give up land but are agitating for higher prices.”