Despite the drubbing in the Lok Sabha polls, the state government has been going ahead with its plans of acquiring land at Geonkhali in the East Midnapore district for a proposed shipyard by a private company.

The East Midnapore unit of the Trinamool Congress has hinted that it will not oppose the project if the interests of the farmers are not compromised.

The compensation packages are being worked out, said the East Midnapore District Magistrate C D Lama.

On June 12, the land department had issued a notification under Section 6 of the Land

Acquisition Act, 1894, saying that nearly 500 acres of land were required for setting up a shipyard at Geonkhali and that the state government was going to acquire it.

The East Midnapore district magistrate had earlier issued a notification under Section 4 of the same Act on May 2008, for the acquisition of land which was deferred due to resistance by villagers.

For a while, the state government kept silent over the land acquisition process as the TMC captured the Zilla Parishad in East Midnapore routing the CPM in the 2008 Panchayat polls.

The newly-formed private company, Bengal Shipping, had approached the state government in 2007 for setting up a shipyard at Geonkhali on the banks of the Hooghly at a time when Nandigram was on the boil over the issue of saving farmland. The state government readily took up the initiative to acquire the land, including farmland, at Geonkhali.

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