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Mamata Banerjee targets BJP as central team probes PMAY irregularities in Bengal
The central team probing the PMAY irregularities in West Bengal faced a demonstration at Bhagabanpur where around 100 women gheraoed their cars
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday when a Union rural development ministry team arrived in the state to probe irregularities in selection of applicants for the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) housing scheme for the poor.
Divided into two groups, the officers reached Malda and East Midnapore districts where political agitations triggered by thousands of complaints continue although the state completed its scrutiny of PMAY applicant lists on December 31. Villagers who own houses or do not meet the other 13 criteria for PMAY were found to have filed applications in 2017-18 when the lists were prepared.
Addressing the media at Sagar Island, Banerjee said: “Fifty lakh applicants had registered their names. We have deleted 17 lakh names. Our inquiries will continue and more names will be deleted. BJP leaders having two or three-storied houses applied as well.”
“They (Centre) are sending one team after another for political reasons… A team, B team, C team, D team. What is this? Teams are being sent if someone bursts a cracker. Cashew nut farmers are being threatened that Income Tax teams will be sent after them. Bengal is being singled out by the Centre and subjected to neglect,” said Banerjee.
She said Bengal has not received funds for projects under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) and compensation for Goods and Services Tax (GST) collected from the state.
Hours later, the central team in East Midnapore faced a demonstration at Bhagabanpur community block where around 100 women demanded the release of MNREGA funds, voicing the same allegation Banerjee raised in the morning.
The women, who claimed to be local villages, gheraoed the cars of the central team members. The convoy could not move for more than an hour, a district police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Taking a swipe at the Trinamool Congress (TMC), leader of the Opposition in the Bengal legislative assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, alleged that nepotism in Bhagabanpur was so large-scale that as many as 84 applications were rejected in just one gram panchayat area.
Irregularities in PMAY applicant lists have become a raging issue across Bengal amid political slugfest in the run-up to the panchayat elections to be held in the coming months.
In the first week of December, when the matter came to light, the state government asked community block development officers (BDOs) in East Midnapore, West Midnapore, East Burdwan, Bankura, Purulia, Hooghly, Malda, North 24 Parganas and Murshidabad districts to visit the homes of applicants for a fresh scrutiny.
In many cases, the ineligible applicants argued that they lived in huts till 2018 and built brick and mortar buildings with their own funds over the last five years.
On November 24, the Union rural development ministry sanctioned ₹13,000 crore for building 11,34,000 homes under the PMAY project in Bengal, partially clearing a financial impasse that arose earlier this year because of suspension of central funds for social welfare schemes. The letter from the ministry said the Centre will pay its share of ₹8,200 crore for PMAY projects provided the scheme is not renamed, new beneficiaries are not added and guidelines on eligibility of beneficiaries are followed.
The BJP has been demanding since 2020 that funds for all social welfare projects be stopped alleging that the TMC government was misusing funds and renaming central schemes for political mileage. The PMAY, for example, was renamed Bangla Awas Yojana, prompting the Centre to stop the funds in March this year.
In July last year, several officers from Delhi arrived in Bengal to examine the implementation of PMAY and other schemes. The state government had to instruct district authorities to repaint all signboards in which the names of the schemes were changed.
