The West Bengal unit of the CPI(M) on Thursday clutched at the Indo-US nuclear deal to steer the discussion at a Left Front meeting away from controversial and deadlocked issues like land acquisition post-Nandigram and the wisdom or otherwise of setting up a chemical hub.
For over one and a half hours, the Left Front meeting discussed the nitty-gritties and route of a proposed march against the 123 nuclear deal, planned for September 4. The jatha or march is to begin at Kolkata and end at Visakhapatnam.
Just last Friday, following the CPI(M) state secretariat’s weekly meeting, former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had said the Front partners would discuss alternatives to Nandigram for the proposed chemical hub or Petroleum, Chemicals & Petrochemicals Investment Region, which was to have been centred on some existing units at the port town of Haldia before the police firing at adjacent Nandigram put the government on the backfoot.
The PCPIR is to include a special economic zone (SEZ) dedicated to chemical industries, in which the main promoter is Indonesia’s Salim group. The Salim group has also proposed to set up a multiproduct SEZ in the area, while the government-owned Indian Oil Corp is to be the anchor investor for the 250sqkm PCPIR.
Earlier this week, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee had written to all political parties in the state, including the eight partners of the CPI(M) in the Left Front, explaining the idea of the PCPIR and what it would mean for the state in terms of investment and industrial growth.
On Thursday, Basu told reporters after the Left Front meeting: “The chemical hub thing is being handled by Buddha.”
Later, at the formal briefing, Left Front chairman Biman Bose said that today’s meeting had discussed only the Indo-US nuclear deal.
“The other controversial issues we shall resolve through bilateral talks,” Bose said, in a reference to the location of the chemical hub and the situation at Nandigram, where villagers opposed to land acquisition ousted CPI(M) supporters in January and have kept them out since.
Left Front sources said Bhattacharjee’s explanatory note has calmed down the opposition within to a great extent.
“We had suggested the formation of an expert committee to consider the environmental angle of a chemical hub, but the Chief Minister has explained that this provision exists in the Union government’s guidelines for a PCPIR,” said Manjukumar Majumdar, the CPI’s state secretary.
“But right now we feel that the nuclear deal is a much more important issue than the chemical hub,” Majumdar said.