The nervousness is palpable. Call it a hot potato or the proverbial Achilles? heel, the West Bengal government is still groping for a solution to the Nandigram flareup.
Even as social activist Medha Patkar was physically assaulted on her way to Nandigram, allegedly by Communist Party of India (Marxist) activists on Thursday, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was grappling with how best to tackle the situation: sit with Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee and members of the Bhoomi Uchched Protirodh Committee (BUPC)and talk out the crisis or seek deployment of central forces.
With Mamata Banerjee giving indications that she would not meet the chief minister or, for that matter, any Left leader except, perhaps, former chief minister and veteran CPI(M) leader, Jyoti Basu, and the Centre conveying to the state government that CRPF men were in short supply, there are limited options available for Bhattacharjee.
The CPI(M) cadres have been allegedly continuing with their rampage in Nandigram with squads entering village after village, firing in the air. According to reports, villagers have been fleeing either to pucca school buildings or to relief camps in Nandigram town itself.
Almost 10 months after the Nandigram blockade began under the leadership of the BUPC or the Save Land Committee, this is the first time the activists feel they are losing ground and are looking for for shelter in refugee camps. At the end of nearly three days of sustained attack by armed CPI(M) cadres, BUPC strongholds were falling one by one, say reports. On Wednesday, the number of villagers seeking shelter in the camps went up to over 3,000. Ironically, majority of the 1,500 CPI(M) supporters who had been staying in refugee camps for nearly eight months since February, 2007 have begun returning home.
Most of these villages are still out of bounds for outsiders, including mediapersons and the police. Armed squads have dug up trenches preventing vehicles from entering the areas. Bullets fly frequently in the air as both sides fire at each other.
Leaders of BUPC, the organisation opposing the government?s now-abandoned plan to acquire land here for a special economic zone, spent the day in town, demonstrating outside the police station to get the police to act. The police, however, declined to move into the ?war zone?. ?What sort of an agitation is this? Bridges are being destroyed, roads are cut, over 100 of our partymen have been butchered. All of us would have to take the initiative to restore peace in the area,? Jyoti Basu told mediapersons after a Left Front meeting in Kolkata.