At the all-party meeting convened by him at Tamluk, Bhattacharjee said the

present situation is different from the earlier circumstances when state police were denied entry in the villages. Now that the police can move freely in the villages, so

they along with EFR and RAF personnel are sufficient to tackle the situation in Nandigram, he told the leaders of the different parties, including his Left Front partners who had proposed to deploy the CRPF again.

“The CRPF may not be available again once it has been withdrawn,” he said at the meeting, which was not attended by leaders from Trinamool Congress, BJP and SUCI. The CPM parliamentarian from Tamluk, Lakshman Seth, also opposed the proposal to deploy CRPF.

The chief minister asked the police and the district administration to be more active in restoring peace in the area. He accepted the proposal to conduct search operations to seize illegal arms stockpiled in the villages. The chief minister also proposed a ban on rallies and meetings in Nandigram to curb tension in the villages.

Bhattacharjee asked the district administration to look into complaints by villagers who were allegedly not allowed to cultivate their land.

Meanwhile, at a rally in Haldia, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee criticised the state government decision to withdraw CRPF from the area after the panchayat polls. She claimed that the presence of CRPF could have restored normalcy at Nandigram.

Justifying the decision not to attend the all-party meeting, she said that the state leadership of the Trinamool was not invited at the meeting. So the party decided not to attend it, she added.

She blamed “CPM’s internal conflict” behind the recent death of the CPM activists in Nandigram. The district police and the CPM implicated false criminal cases against Trinamool leaders of the district, she alleged.

In Kolkata, Congress leader Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi said that deployment of CRPF and an impartial district police alone can restore normalcy in Nandigram.