Former chief minister and CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu on Friday wondered whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was aware of the fact that hundreds of CPM supporters were driven out of homes and have since been staying in refugee camps close to Nandigram.
“Is the prime minister aware of the situation at Nandigram? Two thousands of our people are in camps, though we are in the government here. This is a matter of shame,” Mr Basu told reporters after a meeting of the CPM state secretariat here.
Dr Manmohan Singh had decried the alleged rape and murder of innocent people at Nandigram when the Opposition Trinamool Congress chief, Ms Mamata Banerjee, met him at New Delhi on Thursday with a delegation of victims from Nandigram.
“His (Dr Singh’s) observation has come out in the papers.
But has Mamata Banerjee ever told the prime minister that 2,000 of our men have been driven out of Nandigram?” Mr Basu shot back when asked to react to Dr Singh’s comments in New Delhi.
Ms Banerjee, who has been leading protests against the acquisition of farmland for industry in West Bengal, had recently met the prime minister who said he had shared his anguish over the incidents in Nandigram with Ms Banerjee.
The nonagenarian CPM Politburo member also slammed the CBI for arresting a CPM leader in connection with the murder of Tapasi Malik — a woman linked to protests against the Tata Motors’ small car project at Singur — and said the agency was not impartial.
“The CBI was never in our favour. I found this when I was in the government,” the former chief minister Jyoti Basu  said when asked to react to the arrest of CPM’s Singur zonal committee secretary Suhrid Dutta by the CBI.
‘Bengal against Pota-like law’
Kolkata, dhns: The W Bengal government is against framing any legislation like POTA, but is keen to strengthen the existing laws for dealing firmly with terrorism, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said here on Friday.
Conceding the presence of terrorist groups in W Bengal, Mr Bhattacharjee said the state government is taking measures to strengthen laws to deal with them. “But under no circumstances, the Left Front government wants to detain anyone without trial.We will not formulate any law like POTA,” he said while replying to a question in the state assembly.
He said his government has formed a five-member committee to review the existing police act and draft a new legislation in line with the directions of the Supreme Court. The panel which was constituted in March, has been asked to prepare the draft as early as possible.
On the timeframe for preparing the draft, he said it would not take much time as the UPA government has already sent a model act to the state. The apex court has given several directions for preparing a new police act and forming a security commission, a police complaint authority and a police establishment board to oversee transfers and separate the investigative and day-to -day work of the police force. The SC, the CM said, had pointed out that there should be a definite policy for selecting the director general of police and that officers should have a minimum tenure of two years in a post.