Date:24/02/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/02/24/stories/2007022404531400.htm

National

West Bengal: industrial drive to continue

Special Correspondent

Campaign on to convince people that agriculture will not suffer, says Jyoti Basu

West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

KOLKATA: A three-month campaign is under way across West Bengal to explain to the people that the State Government's move for industrial development would not be at the cost of agriculture, veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu said here on Friday.

This, however, is not expected to have a bearing on the process of land acquisition for industry in areas marked for setting up of new projects or put on hold the industrial drive.

The land acquisition process is on in certain places, save at Nandigram in Purbo Medinipur district, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said later in the day.

Mr. Bhattacharjee had, on earlier occasions, stated that there would be no acquisition of land at Nandigram — the proposed site for a chemical hub — till the people of the area gave their consent. If that was not forthcoming an alternative site might have to be considered, he said.

Asked whether the CPI (M) campaign meant that the industrialisation process would be postponed, Biman Bose, Secretary of the party's State Committee, said after a meeting of the CPI (M)'s State Secretariat that neither had a decision been taken to postpone the industrial drive nor go overboard pushing it through.

Had the pro-industry campaign been launched earlier certain "misunderstandings [on the issue] could well have been avoided," Mr. Jyoti Basu pointed out. "But it is important that our party workers and mass organisations now go to the people and convince them that the industrialisation process would not put in jeopardy agricultural prospects," he added.

At the recently concluded two-day conference of the CPI (M) State Committee leaders reiterated the need to intensify the campaign to explain the Government's plans on industrial development.

Differences

Mr. Basu also felt that the West Bengal Land Reform Amendment Bill 2006, which proposes to increase land availability for industry, commerce and infrastructure, was unlikely to be placed in the coming session of the Assembly as had earlier been hoped.

This comes in the wake of differences between the CPI (M) and its three major partners in the Left Front — the Communist Party of India, the All India Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

"No decision as yet"

"It is difficult... It [the Bill] might come up this time [at the coming session]," Mr. Basu said. "The Left Front has not taken any decision [regarding the proposed Bill]," Mr. Biman Bose added when asked of its future.