Haldia:
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said on Tuesday, "Nothing has happened in Haldia." A day later, Haldia Bulk Terminal (HBT), a private cargo handling company operating in two berths at the Haldia Dock Complex (HDC), announced it was pulling out of the state. As reasons for its exit, HBT cited lack of security for its employees, three of whom were kidnapped, and a breakdown in the law and order situation at the port. It also said it was exiting because the Kolkata Port Trust (KoPT) had failed to honour a September 12 agreement and accused it of toeing the line of "vested interests" instead.
(Read: Termination letter from HBT to KoPT)Was HBT's exit engineered to benefit another company operating at the Haldia dock? Those alleged "vested interests" that HBT has said forced it to exit are, primarily, two Trinamool MPs: One of them is Shubhendu Adhikari, an MP from Tamluk, including the Haldia area, and the other is TMC's Rajya Sabha MP Srinjoy Bose, whose family concern, Ripley and Company, has been the dominant player at HDC for at least two decades. There are 14 berths at Haldia. Ripley controls onshore handling of cargo in at least 8 of them.
(Read: 10-point guide)Despite emphatic denials from the state government and also KoPT Chairman Manish Jain, who dismissed HBT's charges as "obnoxious, false and untrue", NDTV has access to documents that show that HBT's worries might not have been unfounded.
On September 20, an officer of the Haldia Dock Complex sent an email to the chairman of Kolkata Port Trust on September 20. This mail states that Mr Shubhendu Adhikari had called that officer on phone and demanded to know why a ship called Nanos had been berthed at an HBT berth and not other berths. The officer's email says that the MP threatened that even if cargo was unloaded from the ship, he would not allow a single truck of cargo to move out of the port.
(Read: Trinamool MP threatens Haldia Dock Complex officer)According to sources, the MP prevailed and the ship Nanos was removed from HBT's berth and unloaded at another berth that HBT did not operate.
Another document, a letter, shows that there was indeed a breakdown of the law and order situation and that the KoPT chairman was aware of it. The port chairman himself has written this letter to the Home Secretary of West Bengal on September 19, in which he says that workers of private handling agents at Haldia belonging to the Trinamool union had the previous day gheraoed or surrounded port offices to protest against ships being sent to HBT berths.
(Read letter) And yet Ms Banerjee said nothing had happened in Haldia.
NDTV has also accessed another letter, this time from a Haldia Dock Complex manager to the Haldia Police station about the same incident that the port chairman's letter mentions. The manager writes that the workers who gheraoed the dock offices belonged to Ripley and Company.
(Read letter)Mr Srinjoy Bose would not respond to NDTV's queries, saying he was in Australia. He directed NDTV to his brother Shoumik Bose, who runs Ripley. NDTV spoke to Shoumik Bose, but he did not respond to questions. Neither did Mr Adhikari or anybody else in the Trinamool Congress.
Backing the documents, Ramakant Burman, general secretary of the port workers association and who has been suspended from the Haldia Dock Complex, alleged that Ripley was not even licenced to do the onshore work it was doing at HDC. "Yet it is earning Rs 200 crore a year, without sharing anything with KoPT," Mr Burman told NDTV in Kolkata. He also alleged that Ripley and the two MPs had forced HBT to exit.
(Watch: Ramakant Burman's interview to NDTV)Meanwhile, a tape of a speech by Shubhendu Adhikari at a public rally in Haldia in March 2010, when the CPM ruled West Bengal, is doing the rounds. In the speech, the purported voice of Mr Adhikari is heard saying: "Whatever equipments they will bring in, we will bring them outside the dock gates. As an MP I am promise this. We will not let them enter the port because at the moment they don't have any locus standi. The tenure of the borad of trustees of the Port Trust ends on March 31, 2010. Before that we will have no further discussion about HBT. When the new board is formed, our govt will help form it, we will have our people on it and when HBT's petition for renewal of extension comes up in April, we will write 'N-O' on it."
The speech, say port workers like Mr Burman, indicates that Mr Adhikari has wanted HBT out for very long.