Constitutional machinery breakdown in Bengal: Sushma

Claiming total breakdown of the constitutional machinery in West Bengal, BJP leader Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday demanded dismissal of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government and said that her party would seek the President`s intervention to stop the setting up of a special economic zone at Nandigram.

“There has been a total breakdown of constitutional machinery in West Bengal and the state government should be immediately dismissed,” Swaraj told a gathering of farmers here at a village in Nandigram block in East Midnapore district.

Leading a five-member team of BJP MPs here to assess the situation following violence by farmers against the plan to set up SEZ, she alleged that in Nandigram block, CPI-M cadres butchered innocent villagers, while the police remained a silent spectator and took no action to save them.

The BJP leader said that her party would appeal to the President to scrap the plan to set up the SEZ at Nandigram.

The villagers facilitated entry to the village of her convoy by throwing planks and tin sheets over the trenches on the roads to make a temporary bridge, which was removed immediately after she drove through.

Asked whether the party would demand a CBI inquiry into the incidents, she said, “an inquiry is held for something which is not known, but here everybody knows what happened. The CPI-M cadres colluded with police to kill innocent villagers.”

The BJP leader accused Sushanta Ghose, a state minister and CPI-M MP Lakshman Seth, who is also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority, of instigating the attacks on villagers.

Swaraj said that her party was not against industrialisation, but it was opposed to setting up of industry on agricultural land.

“It is a declared policy of the BJP that SEZs should not be set up on productive land and only barren land should be used,” she said.

Swaraj warned that setting up industry on agricultural land might threaten the food security of the country.

She visited the homes of three farmers of the area who died in the clashes last Saturday during the agitation against the chemical hub planned to be set up by Salim Group of Indonesia.

BJP state general secretary Rahul Sinha announced a party compensation package to the families of those killed in the clashes.