Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Saturday poured cold waters on rising speculations among political circles here over a possible bipartite meeting with Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacherjee to end the prolonged land dispute in Singur and Nandigram.
At a massive party rally here to mark the tragic death of 13 party supporters in police firing more than a decade back, Ms Banerjee ruled out any such possibility of a direct meeting with Mr Bhattacherjee even though the latter indicated in more than one occasion of his readiness to sit for a one-to-one with her to thrash out differences over land acquisition.
“I will dishonour those who lost their lives at Nandigram and the innocent and poor farmers of Singur if I sit across the table with the chief minister.
“Unless the guilty are punished for the genoice at Nandigram and farmers’ land is restored at Singur, there is no question of any dialogue with him,” she told the supporters who virtually immobilised traffic at the heart of city's main business district.
Mr Bhattacherjee had recently indicated that he was ready to shed personal ego to meet the Trinamool national chairperson for the sake of progress of the state as without any co-operation of the state’s principal opposition party, the progress would never be smooth.
Instead, Ms Banerjee announced a slew of programmes that will certainly keep the ruling CPM-led government on tenterhooks.
Ms Mamata Banerjee urged the supporters to build up movements to resist the government’s bid to acquire multi-crop land for setting up industrial projects.
“I’ll personally start visiting the districts from September onwards as part of our programme – Operation CPIM – to oust the Marxists from power in the Panchayat elections slated middle of next year,” she said. “We cannot dislodge the CPM from power unless we win at the panchayat level.”