West Bengal : Condemn the police firing on protesting villagers in Dubrajpur! No matter which party is in power, it is the same story of corporate land grab and plunder!

"The problem started during the Left Front rule. Since then we have knocked on the doors of all political parties — CPM, Congress and Trinamool Congress. All of them assured us that they would take up the cause but didn't do anything" – the protesters at Dubrajpur

In another case of police firing at the behest of corporations, an armed force of over 1,000 policemen entered Dubrajpur in West Bengal’s Birbhum district and opened fire on protesting villagers. Twenty villagers, including a woman and school children, were injured in the police firing with two of them in a serious condition. The police went there to recover the machinery of the DVC-EMTA Coal Mines which has acquired 600 acres of land from the area.

The background of the police firing: In 2010, during the then ‘Left’ Front rule, the DVC-EMTA Coal Mines was given nearly 600 acres of land for an open-cast mine. Since then, the people had been protesting against the land grab. After the TMC came to power in 2011 it continued with the project despite stern opposition from the people. In 2011 the villagers of Loba, Palashdanga and Juprai drove away the officials from the region and seized their instruments, demanding that the government pay them the compensation first. The TMC led state government and the DVC Emta Coal mines since then were working in tandem to recover the equipment. The industries minister Partha Chatterjee called up the local SP a few days back asking him to expedite the recovery. The TMC Birbhum president Anubrata Mandal even accompanied when the police was on its way to wreck mayhem.

The TMC led state government ordered the police firing. But, it was however quick to go into a denial mode right after the firing - even going to the extent of forging hospital documents of the injured to somehow prove its claims. Similar to what was said by the CPM during Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh movements, the TMC is claiming that the “innocent” people of Dubrajpur were incited to violence by ‘misguided outsiders’. And when our ruling class politicians are talking about outsiders, how can they forget the Maoists? CPM always saw the hand of Maoists and TMC (as well as a nexus between the two!) whenever people rose up in revolt against its terror. And now the TMC is claiming that the Maoists and CPM may be behind the resistance in Dubrajpur! But seeing through this hypocrisy of both the TMC and CPM, the people of Dubrajpur who are currently protesting against the TMC led state government and its attempts of forceful eviction also refused to talk to the ‘Left’ front delegation that went to the area.

The TMC had replaced the CPM government more than a year back with the grand promise of ‘parivartan’. But it did not take long for the real face of this parivartan to unmask itself. Mamata Banerjee who had shed crocodile tears for the struggling people of Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh did not take long to unleash the same state repression on the people, once she came to power. The continuing state terror in Junglemahal, the eviction of slum dwellers and arrest of activists from Nonadanga and now the police firing in Dubrajpur reveals how the TMC is united with all other parliamentary parties in carrying on with brute force all the anti-people policies of the Indian state. Only a revolutionary transformation of the present society, and not change of governments, will put an end to the corporate loot and plunder.