E-Paper
CM Mamata pulls up bureaucrats for delay in govt projects in poll-bound Bengal
The chief minister directed the officers to send daily updates on some of the government schemes and services to the chief minister’s office (CMO) at the state secretariat and asked the chief secretary of the state to monitor the developments.
With less than five months left for the crucial West Bengal assembly elections, chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday seemed to be visibly peeved with some of the state’s bureaucrats and pulled them up over delay in government projects.
The chief minister directed the officers to send daily updates on some of the government schemes and services to the chief minister’s office (CMO) at the state secretariat and asked the chief secretary of the state to monitor the developments.
The government also launched an outreach program Paraye Paraye Samadhan (solution in every neighbourhood) on Monday to address smaller issues and problems neighbourhoods usually face, which could be fixed at the local level without any major intervention by the state government.
But even as the chief minister was launching the outreach program in Birbhum and directing government officials to expedite government services, back in Kolkata a few hundred Self Employed Labour Organisers staged a protest at a program which was attended by three ministers. The SLOs alleged that they were not getting the commission due from the government for the last seven months. Flexes were torn and chairs were hurled at the meet.
“The government is repeatedly giving instructions but you are interpreting them in a different manner. People are being turned away. I don’t want to see this. If the lower-level officers do not get proper instructions from the top, how can they be blamed? I want daily reports at the CMO,” Banerjee told the secretary of one of the government departments.
The chief minister was holding an administrative meeting in Birbhum district with top bureaucrats from various departments of the state government and district administration.
Union home minister Amit Shah, who had held a mega roadshow in the same district on December 20 during his two-day visit to the state to bolster the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election campaign, was impressed with the huge turnout. Banerjee is scheduled to hold a roadshow on the same route on Tuesday.
Buoyed by its impressive gains in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls where the party won 18 of the 42 seats, the BJP has set a target of winning more than 200 seats in the 294-member legislative assembly.
While the BJP has been targeting the Mamata Banerjee government over lawlessness, stunted development and unemployment in the state among other issues, the ruling Trinamool Congress has been trying to counter them with achievements made by the Banerjee-administration in the last ten years and has launched some outreach programs.
