Bengal govt to stop monthly honorarium to imams & purohits, issues warning against vandalism

Kolkata: The new BJP government in West Bengal on Monday decided to discontinue the schemes introduced by the erstwhile Trinamool Congress regime for providing monthly honorariums to the Imams and Muezzins of the mosques, as well as the Purohits (priests) of the temples, from the next month.

The state government’s move came even as Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari issued a stern warning against “vandalism” and “hooliganism” as well as against attacks on police personnel during protests. “Political and religious organisations can hold programmes after informing the police. But gathering people, raising religious slogans, and pelting stones cannot go on. Stone-pelting at police has stopped in Kashmir, and I think it will stop in West Bengal, too," Adhikari said on Monday. He added that police had arrested nearly 40 people in connection with the unrest in Park Circus in Kolkata during protests on Sunday against the demolition of allegedly illegal construction in some areas of the city inhabited mostly by people of the religious minority community. “There will be zero tolerance towards this kind of unrest, hooliganism and anti-national, anti-social activities. We will not allow such things to continue,” said the chief minister.

Adhikari also said that the state government had constituted two commissions headed by retired judges of the Calcutta High Court to investigate the alleged institutional corruption and atrocities against women and girl children during the tenure of the previous TMC government. The chief minister said that both panels would start work on June 1.

“The cabinet has approved the discontinuation of schemes based on religious categorisation,” Agnimitra Paul, the state’s minister for welfare of women and children, told journalists after a meeting of the state cabinet. The allocation in the state budget for payment of the monthly honorariums to the Imams, Muezzins, and Purohits would be scrapped, she indicated.

The Imams of registered mosques in West Bengal had been provided a monthly honorarium of Rs 3,000 by the erstwhile TMC government, while the Muezzins and Purohits had received Rs 2,000 every month.

Adhikari’s government, however, has not yet decided on the scheme introduced by Mamata to provide financial assistance to the organisers of the annual public festival of Durga Puja in West Bengal.

The state’s BJP government also introduced the ‘Annapurna Yojana’ to provide monthly financial assistance of Rs 3000, replacing ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’, a similar scheme introduced by Mamata Banerjee, the former chief minister, in 2021, albeit with a lower monthly payout. The state cabinet on Monday also approved free travel for women on the government buses from June 1.