Trinamool Congress spreading violence, accuses Buddhadeb

Kolkata, Jan 4 (ANI): West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee haslammed the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party for creating a culture of violence in the state.

Addressing a rally here on Monday, Bhattacharjee said: "The opposition party is spreading a blanket of violence over the state. They want power, they want to destroy the State Assembly, they want control over the villages and to achieve their objective they are ready to take the path of destruction and violence."

He also accused Trinamool Congress of spreading lies and engaging themselves in tampering and distorting facts.

Pointing that the CPI (M) was the first political party in the state to have championed the cause of landless farmers, Bhattacharjee said, "We have to walk on the path of industrialisation, but have to tread carefully."

He said that drawing lessons from past experiences in Singur and Nandigram, the Left Front government has decided to be careful in acquiring land for industrialisation.

He slammed the opposition for violence in Singur and Nandigram undoing the government's efforts at industrialisation.

"We did not choose the land, it was the Tatas who did it. Our objective was to have an automobile industry. But Trinamool Congress began agitating and spreading all sorts of wrong information to scare away landowners. They asked for the return of 400 acres to unwilling farmers, who were merely five per cent of the land-losers. We gave an assurance that we would return 100 acres... the factory could not have happened if we had given up 400 acres."

On the issue of Nandigram, Bhattacharjee said it was not the intention of "my police" to march into that place to ensure land acquisition.

"However, Trinamool carried out a malicious campaign saying we had brought in the police to acquire land at gunpoint. They began resisting and the police had to fire. Can a Leftist government fire on people? But we were tainted by the Trinamool even without taking an inch of land there," he added. (ANI)