JOIN USTrinamool calls Centre’s freeze of funds to West Bengal 'dirty politics'
Mere days after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking his intervention to get central funds released to West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress lambasted the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre for depriving the state of financial aid.
The party alleged that the BJP was doing so because it was one of the states with a non-BJP government.
Chandrima Bhattacharya, a minister in the state government and a party spokesperson, alleged on Tuesday that despite repeated written reminders, and the chief minister personally taking up the issue with the Prime Minister, West Bengal was “deprived of its dues”. Bhattacharya said this attitude towards the state was because it was not governed by the BJP.
The party maintained that West Bengal was being deprived of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and the Centre was yet to clear the pending dues.
Of the Rs 7,130 crore due in 2022, Rs 2,800 crore were just the wages of workers, Bhattacharya said. “Our demand is simple - RELEASE OUR FUNDS! Our fight will continue until our workers are provided with their deserved wages under MGNREGA. Petty excuses & dirty politics by @BJP4India has led to unprecedented suffering of people. SHAMEFUL!” she tweeted.
The state hadn’t received the central fund under the scheme since January. Banerjee, who met Modi recently, had also raised the concern in her letters.
Countering the Centre’s claim that the state government was executing the central-funded schemes with changed names, Bhattacharya said that the MGNREGA had not been renamed, so there was no reason for the freeze. She termed such an allegation “lame excuse”, adding that the economically challenged were the ones suffering because of “dirty politics”.
The party also claimed that such a situation didn’t persist with states where the BJP was in power. In a federal system, no state can be deprived this way, Bhattacharya said.
Sukhendu Sekhar Ray, Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha member, too, highlighted other central schemes where progress was halted. He said that the BJP, after coming to power at the Centre, renamed 19 of 23 central projects that were functional before the Modi government came to power, without consulting states. The states were partners in the scheme, Ray said.