KOLKATA: Though the state government has set up a mini secretariat at strife-hit Sandeshkhali to contain people’s anger leading to a largescale stir against the TMC satraps, which is said to be a wake-up call for the ruling party, the North 24 Parganas island continued to be on the boil on Saturday.
The local residents chased away the families of a local TMC leader in presence of policemen and women, who has been in forefront of the stir against the TMC’s local strongman Shahjahan Sheikh and other satraps, staged demonstrations and took out protest marches wielding brooms.
The government has set up 18 camps in Sandeshkhali deploying officials from the irrigation, land reforms, food and supplies department to receive complaints. In the past four days, 817 complaints were lodged in these camps, of which 90 per cent was about converting agricultural land into fisheries by grabbing common people’s properties forcibly.
“Other than forcible land grabbing, complaints of mone extortion from beneficiary schemes like housing for the poor also poured in. We have forwarded the complaints to the higher authorities,” said an officer at one of the camps.
Police, too, set up makeshift centres for receiving complaints in the area in which the name of Shahjahan’s brother Sheikh Sirajuddin popped up. “Out of 66 complaints, 55 are against Sirajuddin who allegedly constructed a market complex under the banner of his name by grabbing lands forcibly,” said a police officer.
As part of damage control move, two TMC ministers Partha Bhowmik and Sujit Basi visited the trouble-hit island on Saturday and faced locals’ ire in their stronghold. More than two hundred women surrounded Basu and Bhowmik to narrate their light caused by the local leaders of the party.
As both ministers patiently heard the aggrieved villages, the villagers also complained about forcible land grabbing and demanded immediate arrest of TMC strongman Shahjahan and the state government’s intervention.
The villagers, mainly women, protested when Bhowmik made a remark that they were taught to demand Shahjahan’s arrest by “someone”.
Basu, however, told the villagers that what happened with them cannot be fixed now but he assured that there would be no re-run of the highhandedness.
“We have listened the villagers’ complaint and will inform Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,” said Basu.
Taking a jibe at the two TMC minister’s Sandeshkhali visit, CPI(M)’s cenral committee member Sujan Chakrabarty said the duo went to the area to hoodwink the victims of the atrocities lashed out by their own party leaders but they were given a befitting reply.
Sandeshkhali has been on the boil since three officers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) were bashed up and left bleeding when they went to search the house of local TMC leader Shahjahan Sheikh regarding a foodgrain scam case on January 5.
On seeing the TMC leader and his two henchmen Shibaprasad Hazra and Uttam Sardar at large since the attack on the federal agency, women of the area mustered up their courage to protests against the sexual abuse on them by the alleged ruling party’s satraps.
