West Bengal CM should resign owning Nandigram killings:CPI-ML

New Delhi, Mar 15 (UNI) Activists of CPI(ML-ND) today staged a demonstration at Parliament Street here, condemning the Left Front government of West Bengal for the killing of peasants in police firing at Nandigram and sought resignation of Chief Minister Budhadeb Bhattacharjee owning responsibility for the dastardly incident.

Waving placards and hoardings, the slogan-shouting protestors alleged that the police firing that killed more than a dozen people and injured around 50 of them, was ''pre-planned to crush peasantry resisting the forcible land acquisition at Nandigram''.

Later at the rally of CPI-ML activists, party's Delhi Committee secretary Aparna accused the CPI(M) government of acting ''in the service of corporates and MNCs and using the colonial land acquisition Act of 1894 backed with brutal police force to displace the small farmers from their cultivable land''.

In the name of industrialisation, the CPI(M)-led government was helping the Saleem Group which was instrumental in killings of the communists in Indonesia, she alleged.

At the same time, Janhastakshep, People's Intervention Group also condemned the Nandigram killings, alleging that CPI(M) workers, using the police cover, had also fired upon the villagers opposing the acquisition of their land for SEZ. ''The incident has exposed the true character of cadre of ruling CPI(M) in West Bengal which is acting as a vigilante group for the benefit of international capital.'' Group's Convenor N K Bhattacharya said yesterday's incident was the culmination of a series of earlier incidents when CPI(M) cadre also fell prey to the repressive tactics aimed at intimidating the protestors at Nandigram.

Janhastakshep has sought the scrapping of the SEZ Act of 2006 and an end to the forcible acquisition of the farmers' land for a private company.

UNI