WILL SANDESHKHALI BE MAMATA'S NANDIGRAM?

The land-grab issue that became the cornerstone for TMC’s poll cry has now become the bugbear Mamata Banerjee needs to deal with in Sandeshkhali.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

Sandeshkhali, a small island in the Sundarbans area in North 24-Parganas district, about 75 km from Kolkata, is in the national news for reasons that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee would remember with a sense of déjà vu. A mass uprising of women in Sandeshkhali, their faces hidden behind their sari pallu, wielding staffs and brooms in protest against atrocities, is reminding people of the mass movements that propelled Mamata Banerjee to power.

S Political observers say that it was the allegations of "land grab" in Singur and Nandigram that brought Mamata Banerjee to power, ousting the Communists who had reigned for 34 long years.

The long-drawn movement by Mamata Banerjee between 2006 and 2008 against alleged "forcible" takeover of "fertile" land for Tata Motors' Nano project and the Nandigram movement which came up in response to the Left Front Government's decision to hand over 14,000 acres of land to Indonesia's Salim Group of Industries were the catalysts that propelled her to the Chief Minister's chair in West Bengal in the next election.

The land-grab issue that became the cornerstone for Trinamool Congress's poll cry has now become the bugbear Mamata Banerjee needs to deal with in Sandeshkhali at a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leaving no stone unturned to corner the Trinamool Congress supremo and her party.

"Sandeshkhali is Nandigram 2.0," says Rajagopal Dhar Chowdhury, a noted academic. Then and now, the state government and its forces have established a veritable reign of terror in the region, intimidating, assaulting and even killing activists, he says.