Angry village women drove out Tata Motors team
15 January, 2007
Kolkata, Jan 15 :Angry village women Monday drove out a Tata Motors team when it visited Gopalnagar village in Singur, the focal point of protests against land acquisition for a car project in West Bengal.
Official sources in Singur, about 40 km from here in Hooghly district, confirmed the confrontation that took place in the afternoon though Inspector General of Police (Law and Order) Raj Kanojia here said he had no information of any major incident in the area.
The farmers' body in Singur, emboldened by the resistance shown by Nandigram villagers to the state government's land acquisition policy, said they would not allow Tata Motors in their villages at any cost.
The Tata team, along with officials of the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) and the local block development office (BDO), had gone to Singur, which is still under Section 144, to discuss the plan to take a group of villagers to steel city Jamshedpur to showcase community development initiatives by the Tatas.
"Some Tata officials, including one Mr. Suryabanshi, had gone to the panchayat office in Gopalnagar but our women resisted them. They even threw slippers at the officials and heckled them," Becharam Manna of the Singur Krishijami Raksha Committee (Save Singur Farmland Committee) told IANS.Tata Motors has not reacted officially to the incident yet.
"There is no reaction so far," said a representative of the firm's public relations wing."You killed Tapasi Malik (a village girl who was burnt to death inside the fenced off land), you," the villagers told the cops and the officials as women shouted: "Go back Tata".The angry reaction was a result of a rumour that the company was planning to lay the foundation stone for the project.
Social activist Anuradha Talwar was also present during the confrontation.The Trinamool Congress, whose leader Mamata Banerjee had undertaken a 25-day fast against land acquisition in Singur last month, has an agitation programme in the area Tuesday.
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posted by Bimal 15.1.07,
