No more Bengal land for industry till SEZ rules change: CPM

Days after the Calcutta High Court ordered a CBI probe into the police firing in Nandigram, the CPM leadership today called for a judicial inquiry and announced that no industrial project involving large acquisition of land, “such as the one by Salim Group”, will take place in West Bengal until the Centre changes its policy on special economic zones (SEZs).

Making this announcement, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, however, said that the Tata small cars project in Singur could go on as “the situation in Singur and Nandigram are not the same”. Even the Jindal Group’s steel plant project, he said, could go ahead. The Jindal Group plans to invest Rs 12,000 crore in an integrated steel plant in the Midnapore region with a capacity of 5 million tonnes.

Karat said that a judicial inquiry into the Nandigram incident was needed to bring out the “circumstances” that led to it and to suggest “remedial action.” The proposed project there, he said, would be shifted and an “alternative site” was being looked at.