We will balance agriculture with industry : Bhattacharjee

Kolkata, Dec 3 (UNI) Urging the opposition not to block the Tata Motors' project at Singur, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee today asserted that his government was determined to push through the industrialisation process striking a balance with agriculture.

''Please do your sums once again. Do not oppose industrialisation and ruin the state. If the Tatas go back it would send a wrong signal to others, and nobody will come to set up industries,'' he said while speaking at a CITU rally, organised at the Brigade Parade Ground in support of the nationwide strike by 56 trade unions and mass organisations on December 14.

A day after the Trinamool Congress and other opposition party supporters clashed with police at Singur during demarcation of the acquired land for the small car project, Mr Bhattacharjee said his Government could not afford to sit complacent with agricultural success as industry was the only way to progress and generat employment.

''Thousands of unemployed youths are looking at us...we need many more industries to provide for them...this has to be done on the basis of our success in agriculture. But we have to measure every step so that agriculture is not affected,'' he said.

Earlier, veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu had also emphasised that West Bengal needed rapid industrialisation and for that land was necessary.

The Chief Minister said the state had 62 per cent of agricultural area as against only one per cent of barren land. The government had made prior homework on the amount of land necessary to be kept for agriculture. Besides, there was a need for increasing production in the available agricultural land, he added.

Asserting that the small car project at Singur would usher in ancillary units and more automobile companies to come in the state, Mr Bhattacharjee said this would create direct and indirect employment to a large number of people. ''This will change the economic dynamics and you have to understand what we stand to gain in lieu of what we are giving,'' he said.

Denying that police had committed any atrocity on the protestors at Singur yesterday, the chief minister said the force, deployed in the showed restraint before swinging into action to remove those creating distrubance and ensure the demarcation work. He alleged that aided by some ''outsiders'' the Trinamool Congress, the SUCI and the Naxal supporters had attacked police with bombs, stones and acid bulbs.

Local farmers had ''voluntarily'' handed over about 950 acres out of a total 998 acres of land required for the Tatas' small car factory and there was no coercion on the part of the government, he added.

MORE UNI KDG PC MS RS1818