| Tamluk, Jan. 5: A group of people who had sold their land to the government way back in 2005 descended on a Haldia plot today led by Trinamul Congress leaders and demanded preference during recruitment for a "knowledge park" coming up there. The Calcutta-based Apeejay Group had only started filling up the land this morning when about 300 people arrived and stopped work. Trinamul's Haldia (town) president Sadhan Jana said they would not allow work on the plot until all the landlosers were provided with photo identity cards promising preference in jobs. "We will continue our agitation until our demand is met. We have also set up a committee to spearhead the agitation here," said Jana. On the 10-acre plot, the Apeejay Group initially intends to build two high schools — one English-medium and the other Bengali. A month ago, the company had started distributing photo-identity cards such as those demanded by Trinamul today to those who had lost their land to a 90-acre logistic hub coming up only 8km from the the school project. Today, Apeejay said it was impossible for it to offer the same package everywhere. "Here, we are building two educational institutions and it is a no-profit initiative. We will build an English-medium school and a school for the economically weaker sections. We do not need a large number of unskilled workers. If someone is eligible for a teacher's post, we can consider it," said Sau- rav Daspatnaik, an Apeejay director. Asked if the company was rejecting the Trinamul demand, Daspatnaik said: "We are yet to decide whether the I-cards are necessary in this case." Talks he had with Jana around 3pm today failed. In Geonkhali, 25km away, another Apeejay project is stuck because of Trinamul resistance. There, the company wants to build a Rs 2,000-crore shipyard across 550 acres in collaboration with Bharati Shipyard. The government had to stall land acquisition for the project because of the resistance. Nandigram, the cradle of the battle against land acquisition for industry, is only about 10km across the river Hooghly from where the Apeejay schools are supposed to come up. Ashis Pramanik, 48, a resident of Barghashipur mouza who had given about a third of an acre for the school project, said: "We want photo-identity cards like those being given to landlosers at Chakdipa." At Barghashipur and Raghunathchak mouzas, the government had paid Ashis and about 100 others like him between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 12 lakh an acre — depending on the plots' proximity to the road leading to the Haldia City Centre. The work to fill the low land began today and five trucks had offloaded earth on the plot when the villagers, carrying Trinamul flags, came. Additional district magistrate Srikumar Tarafdar said the company had not informed the administration about the agitation. Local MP Subhendu Adhikari, who had led the Nandigram movement and was present on December 4 when Apeejay distributed the I-cards for the logistic hub project, tried to portray today's protest as a spontaneous movement by villagers. That was the Trinamul line in Singur and Nandigram as well. "It is the agitation of the landlosers. The Trinamul is supporting their demand," Adhikari said today. Top Trinamul leaders, however, appeared reluctant to back the land protest immediately, especially when their leader Mamata Banerjee was trying to portray herself as pro-development. MLA Partha Chatterjee said he would talk to Adhikari and added: "I think people of that area will understand (the difficulty in providing every landloser family with a job) if the idea of a knowledge park is explained to them." | 
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