‘Hasn’t spend funds, but didi wants more’

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee may have been regularly complaining about lack of funds to run her state, but at least two Union ministers recently flagged concerns that her government failed to put large sums of allotted central funds to use for food distribution and drinking water.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Bannerjee may have been regularly complaining about lack of funds to run her state, but at least two Union ministers recently flagged concerns that her government failed to put large sums of allotted central funds to use for food distribution and drinking water.

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Food minister KV Thomas went to Kolkata on Tuesday and pulled up the state for lifting just 12.7% of food grains for its poorest and backward districts.

He also pointed out that Bengal has been able to add just 29,600 Metric Tonne(MT) of storage capacity for food grains as against its allotted capacity of 1.27 lakh MT under the Private Entrepreneurs Guarantee scheme. “Bengal is lagging far behind in storage development as compared to other states,” Thomas told HT.

His observations come close to the heel of rural development minister Jairam Ramesh shooting a letter to Banerjee that R253 crore remained unspent till June 1 under national rural drinking water programme.

Ramesh too, has written, “No information on expenditure has been entered by the state department in April-May 2012.”