March 26: The government today renewed its bid to restore normality in Nandigram, declaring its intent to speak to all parties and reach out to the villagers with the assurance that their land would not be taken away.

“Since the political process has not yielded much result, the administration shall begin a peace process by taking everybody into confidence in the six villages of Nandigram where tension still prevails,” home secretary P.R. Ray said. Officials, he added, will try to make the villagers understand the need for peace.

The decision followed a meeting in the chief minister’s office which chief secretary A.K. Deb and police chief A.B. Vohra also attended.

At least three all-party meetings called by the East Midnapore district magistrate after the January 7 violence in Nandigram had been rendered pointless in the absence of a Trinamul Congress repres- entative. “That’s why we may not ask the DM to call the meeting this time,” Ray said.

The government hopes to find “someone acceptable to all” for the job.

Police have already been pulled out of the villages where at least 14 people were killed in their firing on March 14.

The RSP’s Kshiti Goswami today claimed that he had learnt from the party’s district office that around 2,500 CPM supporters, ousted earlier from Nandigram, had accompanied the police that day. “The police had taken the cadres along to resettle them after restoring law and order there.”

Burdwan divisional commissioner Balbir Ram today began an executive probe into the firing.

West Midnapore police detained 45 members of a body opposing land acquisition in Orissa’s Kalinganagar while they were heading to Nandigram to express solidarity with the people there.

In Kalinganagar, 13 tribals were killed in police firing on a protest against land acquisition for a steel plant.

Ten members of a suspected CPM armed squad, who had been picked up by the CBI, were today remanded in police custody till Thursday.