Governor invites Mamata for talks to resolve Singur crisis

Kolkata, Sep 7 (UNI) West Bengal Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi today invited Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee to participate in the discussions to resolve the Singur crisis as a solution remained elusive even after two days of meetings between the government and the Opposition.

After an hour-long meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at Raj Bhavan, the Governor sent a letter to Ms Banerjee, requesting her to take part in the talks.

Announcing at Singur that she would hold discussions with Mr Gandhi at 1500 hours, Ms Banerjee said the dharna would continue simultaneously even though she would be heading to Kolkata.

She said the Governor informed her that the state government was prepared for talks. There was also a possibility of providing land to the land-losing farmers of Singur both from inside as well as outside the Nano car project area.

Earlier, the Chief Minister met the Governor at the Raj Bhavan to discuss the problem persisting over the proposed land-based rehabilitation package for the Singur land-losers.

Before this, an emergency meeting of the ruling Left Front empowered the Chief Minister to ''do whatever he thinks right to protect the interest of the local farmers without affecting the Tata Motors Nano car project.'' The Chief Minister was understood to have told the Governor that it was difficult to give more than 40 acres of land from within the walled planned area of the Tata project, but efforts should be on to locate as much land as possible from outside for rehabilitation of all the land-losers.

After talking to the Chief Minister, the Governor called Leader of the Opposition Partha Chatterjee to convey to him the government's view.

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