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Struck by the recent High Court verdict, which called her Government’s moves on Singur land unconstitutional, the West Bengal Chief Minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, on Wednesday sweetened the offer to the “unwilling farmers.”
The new set of promises came even before her May 19 announcement to offer monthly stipend of Rs 1,000 and rice at Rs 2 a kg reached the aggrieved farmers.
“The monthly remuneration for the needy unwilling farmers and the landless labourers has been hiked to Rs 2,000,” Ms Banerjee said at the Writers’ Buildings, here today.
The hike will come into effect from July 1 this year, she added. Unwilling farmers and landless labourers will also continue to receive rice at Rs 2 a kg a week. On June 22, Calcutta High Court struck down the Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Act, 2011, as unconstitutional and void. The Act aimed at redistribution of land acquired for Tata Nano project to unwilling farmers.
Sources confirmed that till date not a single farmer has received any remuneration because of long-drawn legal formalities.
Responding to a specific query by Business Line after the High Court verdict on June 22 on the status of the remuneration, Mr Dudh Kumar Dhara, a member of the Krishi Jami Raksha Committee (KJRC), said the list was being prepared.
The KJRC is a frontal organisation spearheading the anti-land acquisition movement in the region where the Tata Nano factory was supposed to come up.
“We are preparing the list of beneficiaries,” he said. Mr Dhara is also in-charge of distributing remuneration among farmers in Singur’s Beraberi Purbapara village.
According to Mr Dhara, farmers are required to open bank accounts.
“Since most people do not have accounts, the process of distribution has been delayed. Once they do that we hope the money will start coming in by the end of this month,” he added.
Pacifying farmers
The move to hike the stipend is being seen in political circles as an attempt to pacify aggrieved farmers who had pinned their hopes on the Singur Act for return of land.
“We took part in all the agitations, went to jail and were booked under so many cases. Didi promised to give us Rs 1,000 a month but we are yet to get any of these benefits,” Mr Sheikh Sourav Ali, a person who has lost his land, said.
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