The North Dinajpur district administration has started the proceedings to return more than 70 acres of land to its rightful tribal owners in Ramganj. This is the first time that the administration has taken up the initiative to restore illegally occupied tribal land, an official claimed. On January 16, the subdivisional officer of Islampur, Partha Ghosh, wrote to the district project officer-cum-district welfare officer to begin the proceedings for restoration of the...

The peasants’ organisations of the four Left parties in West Bengal have called the Mamata Banerjee government “insensitive” to the plight of farmers and have decided to mobilise them to launch a campaign. The state government is already under fire from the farmers’ community for failing to procure paddy at the minimum support price (MSP) and provide jobs under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). The CPM’s peasants’...

Agrarian crisis continued in Bengal with farmers continuing to commit suicide after failing to sell their crops. The latest such incident was reported from Malda district in North Bengal, police said. Dayal Chandra Burman a middle-aged peasant committed suicide on Sunday morning at Gajole block in Malda district after he failed to repay Rs 30,000 taken as loan from moneylenders for paddy cultivation. He failed to sell his crops for the...

-The Telegraph Mamata Banerjee today met Irom Sharmila Chanu, who has spent 11 years fasting to force Delhi to lift the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act from Manipur, and expressed “appreciation” for her protest. “Only appreciation?” asked Sharmila, who is being kept alive on a forced diet of liquid nutrition, inserted through a nasal pipe. At an election rally later, Mamata termed the army act a “draconian law” that should have long been...

While Governor M K Narayanan has also put the weight of his office behind the growing concern over farmer suicides in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government seems determined to play these down. In Burdwan, the state’s rice bowl, where 18 of the 27 deaths have been reported in the past four months, the district administration has been approaching families of victims for written statements saying the suicides had nothing to...