Mamata rules out talks with Bengal CM on industrialisation

Kolkata, Jul 21 (UNI) Defusing the hope for an end to the confrontation over industrialisation, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee today categorically said she would not hold talks with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

''The Trinamool Congress will not sit for dialogue unless justice is meted out to the families of Nandigram victims and the Singur farmers,'' she said while addressing a rally in the Esplanade area to observe the annual 'Martyr's Day' in remembrance of the 13 party activists who were killed in police firing in 1993.

Accusing the administration of framing Trinamool supporters in false cases, Ms Banerjee alleged that on the one hand, the Chief Minister was offering talks and on the others hand, he was repressing the opposition voice on the other.

''Either you step down with honour or run the Government with the help of the people and not hoodlums,'' she said.

She alleged that after the Nandigram ''massacre'', attempts were being made to ''murder'' democracy in the adjoining Haldia where the Government was planning to shift the site for the proposed chemical hub.

''I shall continue to fight as long as I live, but there will be no surrender to the CPI(M),'' Ms. Banerjee said.

The assertion of the Trinamool Chairperson came few days after veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu reiterated that Ms Banerjee should enter into negotiation with the Chief Minister to sort out differences over land acquisition and setting up of industries.

While maintaining that a large number of people were killed and women raped in Nandigram on March 14, the Trinamool Congress stuck to its demand that more than 300 acres of farm land, allegedly taken without the consent of owners at Singur for the Tata Motors' small car factory, be returned.

Ridiculing the government for pushing ahead with the Singur project, Ms Banerjee questioned why no industries were coming up in the agrarian North Bengal area where a number of tea gardens remained closed.

She also announced a string of agitational programmes to be launched across the state till September.

A number of peasants of Singur and Nandigram besides workers of the closed tea gardens participated in the rally.

UNI