TMC banks on welfare schemes, launches Yuva Sathi for unemployed youths, BJP’s job jibe continues

Kolkata: With the assembly polls a few weeks away, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal has moved to roll out Yuva Sathi, a new scheme for providing a monthly allowance to jobless youth, ostensibly to blunt the Bharatiya Janata Party’s attempt to weaponise unemployment against the ruling Trinamool Congress.

The BJP, however, accused the TMC of trying to hoodwink the youths of the state and gloss over the failure of Mamata Banerjee’s government in generating employment opportunities in the state.

The government started receiving applications and necessary documents from eligible beneficiaries of the scheme – unemployed youths aged 21-40 years who passed matriculation or equivalent examinations – across the state. Each eligible beneficiary will start receiving financial assistance of Rs 1500 every month and will continue to get it for up to five years or till getting employed. The disbursement of the financial allowance to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries will start from April 1, when the state will possibly be in poll mode.

The BJP stepped up its campaign against the latest welfare scheme of the TMC government, citing police action during a commotion at a camp set up at Chopra in the Uttar Dinajpur district of the state to register the prospective beneficiaries of the Yuva Sathi scheme. “When unemployment is rampant, and frustration is rising, even a basic demand for fairness sparks confrontation and results in indignation. Allegations of favouritism only deepen the sense of injustice,” the state unit of the saffron party posed on X.

The Trinamool Congress projected the scheme as an endeavour by Mamata Banerjee’s government to give a “boost-up” to the educated youths who were looking for employment. As a large number of unemployed youths, even the graduates and post-graduates, queued up at the camps set up in all the 294 assembly constituencies of the state on Sunday, Shashi Panja, a senior leader of the TMC and a minister of the state government, said: “The chief minister launched the scheme to help and encourage the youths. The people have faith in the TMC government’s promises, and that’s why so many youngsters turned up to register themselves as prospective beneficiaries of the scheme.”

Suvendu Adhikari, the frontrunner to be the BJP’s chief ministerial face in West Bengal, however, called the Yuva Sathi “another political gimmick” by the TMC government.

“This TMC government has not only encouraged large-scale corruption in the recruitment to government jobs but also scared away industries and blocked avenues for generating employment in the private sector,” Adhikari, the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly, said.

He alleged a similar scheme, called Yuva Shree, was launched by the TMC government in 2013, but only about one lakh out of 17 lakh youths, who had registered themselves as prospective beneficiaries, had received the financial assistance. “The youths of West Bengal do not want financial assistance; they rather want jobs so that they can earn their livelihood with dignity,” said Adhikari.

Chandrima Bhattacharya, the finance minister of the TMC government, however, said that the Yuva Shree was continuing and at least 12 lakh unemployed beneficiaries of the scheme had so far received approximately Rs 180 crore as financial assistance.

“Ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP had promised to create two crore jobs in the country every year. But the BJP-led government in the Centre had failed to deliver on the promise,” Kunal Ghosh, another senior TMC leader, said, adding: “They (the BJP leaders) should not make any comment on the Yuva Sathi scheme.”

The TMC is relying on the welfare schemes that Mamata Banerjee’s government launched since 2011 to beat the BJP in the assembly elections. The most cited among the schemes was ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’, which was launched after the last assembly elections to help women with financial assistance.

The monthly payout rate under the scheme was recently increased – from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 for a woman in the general category and from Rs 1,200 to Rs 1,700 for each woman of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes. The BJP leaders initially mocked the ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’ and other such welfare schemes. But they had to change tack and promise an ‘Annapurna’s Bhandar’ scheme with a monthly payout at the rate of Rs 3000.