While the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) has made land acquisition neglecting agriculture as the main issue to fight the three decades old CPM-led Left Front government in Bengal, Front partner Forward Bloc says AITC?s land and agricultural agenda are all based on ideas borrowed from the Left.
Forward Bloc leader and also the state?s agriculture minister Naren Dey said the 26 point agenda on agriculture and land use which the AITC enumerated in its manifesto were all basically the government?s on going programmes being pursued all along since it came to power in 1977.
AITC leader and also leader of the Opposition in the state assembly Partha Chatterjee said CPM?s land acquisition led to disruption of law and order and failure of industrial initiatives in the state. But Dey, a five-time MLA from the Chinsurah constituency, said a party contesting the elections should tell the people about their plan of governance and their vision about agriculture, industry and other sectors. But whatever has been said in the manifesto, specially about agriculture, is a copy of the Left Front?s programme.
?What is new in increasing yields, diversifying crop pattern or encouraging farmers to adopt intense cropping,? Dey said. The AITC manifesto says the new government will prepare a land map, to have a clear picture of the availability of agri, non- agri, arid, forest and wet land and following it land would be identified for industrial use. No agricultural land would be acquired for industry, until and unless it comes as a matter of huge necessity, the manifesto says.
In fact, CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at his press conference last Wednesday spoke on the same lines, accepting that the attempt to acquire agricultural land at Singur without creating broad consensus was a mistake. But Dey said the Left Front for some time now has decided not to acquire agricultural land for industrial use until and unless it is of a compelling nature and Trinamool, he said, has simply borrowed it for its manifesto.
But TMC leader and leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee said: ?Bhattacharjee has stolen the idea from Mamata Banerjee to frame his present statement about land acquisition and he has started following Mamata Banerjee?s ways to try and win over people.?
According to Chatterjee, the government never thought of recharging ground water level to facilitate wider irrigation for agriculture and deepening 50,000 ponds is a very fundamental and specific programmer of the Trinamool Congress, which it would take through the new government it would form. ? The idea is clearly enumerated in our manifesto,? Chatterjee said.