Left-era land expert called in for Singur

SINGUR: The Mamata Banerjee government has brought a Left-era land department official, Ramapati Ghosh, back from retirement to tap into his experience in land acquisition-related payouts to untie knots in the handover of unclaimed compensation cheques in Singur.
Of the 11,500-odd parties who had to be compensated when the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government acquired 977.11 acre in Singur in 2006, around 2,210 parties had not accepted the compensation cheques as they were unwilling to part with their land.The compensation amount has to be paid to them now and the land returned as per the Supreme Court directive.
Though 60% cheques of unwilling farmers have since been disbursed, disputes have been raised in some cases where a section of the family was willing to hand over land and therefore collected the compensation while the rest were unwilling and did not. Also, some of the unwilling landowners died in the last 10 years, leading to multiple claimants for the compensation now. Around 500 cheques are yet to be disbursed.
With the current crop of land department officials lacking in experience to handle such complications, the government has requested Ghosh, who was the special land acquisition officer when the Singur land was acquired and compensation checks paid in 2006, to advise the team in Singur.
Ghosh, who had played a key role during the Left Front regime, including acquisition of land for the Pailan Meat Processing Centre at Palba adjoining Durgapur Expressway and Tarakeshwar-Bushnipur rail line, had retired in 2011 when Mamata stormed to power riding the anti-farmland acquisition sentiment, has been allocated space at the Singur block land & land revenue office. "I have come to use my experience and help the government implement the court order in Singur," said Ghosh.Ghosh's return to Singur on September 25 is also significant because it was on this very day that Mamata Banerjee was accosted by police at the Singur BDO office and escorted to Kolkata while protesting against disbursal of compensation cheqeues. Since then, September 25 is observed as Singur Day. On Sunday, Partha Chatterjee,. Subrata Bakshi and Mukul Roy were at Singur to observe the day. Addressing those present, Chatterjee urged willing land-owners to take the ROR and unwilling ones to submit documents so that cheques could be disbursed soon.