West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee affirmed on Wednesday that his government will go on using agricultural land for his state’s industrialisation.

Addressing the media at the 19th party congress of the CPI(M) here, Bhattacharjee said that West Bengal just did not have an option. “Sixty-three per cent of our land is agricultural land, 1 per cent is fallow land, 13 per cent is forest cover, and only 23 per cent is left for industrial purposes. So what do we do? We can’t do with 23 per cent, we must move ahead,” he asserted.

Bhattacharjee’s remarks came a day after the party congress officially resolved that Nandigram was both a “political and administrative mistake”. It also asked Bengal to exercise abundant caution on its industrial policy — the state was told to ensure safeguards are in place for proper rehabilitation and compensation for those displaced.

Explaining the party stand, officially decided in the meet on the issue of Special Economic Zones, Bhattacharjee said the CPI(M) was going to propose a series of amendments to the Government’s SEZ policy.

The Government, he said, would need to come out with a clear policy on which industries should be granted SEZ benefits depending on the level of advanced technology used and export potentials, fix the extent of land to be allocated for specific industrial sectors in SEZs on a need-to basis, and evolve a criterion for the actual land use pattern in SEZs —the party has proposed 50 per cent for actual industrial use, 25 per cent for infrastructure, and the remaining for other purposes.

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