Gunshots were heard and bomb blasts reported for the sixth day on Sunday from parts of Nandigram, as Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee gave a slip to a CPM-led blockade to reach Tamluk in East Midnapore district official sources said.

However, neither Ms Banerjee nor the two companies of CRPF that reached Kolkata from neighbouring Jharkhand could outsmart hundreds of CPM activisits who continued to block all the entry points to Nandigram.

The TMC chief and Central forces, besides mediapersons, have been forced to stay put at Tamluk.

Even as the CPM allies in the state government which held an emergency meeting blamed the ‘big brother’ for the violence, CPM Central Committee member and CITU leader Shyamal Chakraborty claimed that Nandigram had been “rid of terror gangs without bloodshed” to pave the way for the safe return of hundreds of homeless Marxist supporters.

In contrast to the CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury’s assertion in New Delhi that nothing was wrong with the ruling Left Front in West Bengal, the Front coalition partners held the CPM responsible for Nandigram violence.

Meanwhile, CPM supporters allegedly threw bombs from Tekhali Bridge and Mahespur and “recaptured” Sonachura and other villages in Nandigram, eye witnesses claimed.

The Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamta Banerjee, whose resignation from Lok Sabha was set aside resorted to a sit-in dharna.