"Not only the police, it was pre-planned by the police and the CPI-M. And the Chief Minister knew it," he said at a convention organised by the WBPCC minority cell here.

The senior Congress leader, who visited Nandigram after the firing, said 2,500 policemen had been mobilized during the incident.

"Were so many people required to repair two damaged culverts and a few road-cuts? One hundred PWD workers were needed," he said.

Dasmunshi said the chief minister, who cannot avoid administrative responsibility for the incident, should offer a public apology for it.

"If the Chief Minister had apologised publicly for the incident, I would have said that he was upholding the Constitution. He should understand that an apology would not have belittled him. This is a democracy. He should have respected the sentiment of the common people," he said.

Accusing the Left Front government of making a "trial guniea pig" out of West Bengal, he said that after closing down the state's industries during its 30-year rule, it was now trying to jump-start industrialisation.

Stating that the farmers' interest was a priority in the Congress policy, he said the party's faction-ridden West Bengal unit would put up a united fight against the anti-farmer policies of the state government.