In quite a bizarre generosity, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared that 28000 Durga Puja committees in the state will get Rs 10,000 each for the occasion. The money has been earmarked for “community development programmes’, she announced in Kolkata on Monday. The decision comes at a time when the state government employees are crying for their pending dearness allowance. The matter is currently in court.
According to the Chief Minister, there are around 300 puja committees in Kolkata and the rest 25000 are in the districts. The cumulative cost from the state exchequer will be Rs 28 crore. It was Banerjee only who said that the state is cash strapped
With criticism pouring in from all corners, Banerjee has been accused of communalising the political scene in state since the time she came to power. Soon after coming to power in 2011, Banerjee announced “Imam Bhata” for Imams and Muezzins of different mosques. This move was seen as appeasement as her Party Trinamool Congress has a huge chunk of Muslim votes.
It may be recalled that Banerjee had stopped the Durga Puja immersion on the Bijaya Dashami day as it coincided with Muharram last year. The matter reached court and the state government was rebuked by the court for taking such a decision. This time she announced that the immersion will take on from 19 October to 22 October. On the very next the immersion carnival named as Bisorjan Carnival will take place at the Red Road at 4pm.
Regarding last year’s controversy of stopping the Durga Puja immersion, Banerjee defended her move and countered the critics on Monday. “Some people make tall claims. Can they organise Bakr-Eid and Durga Puja at the same time? No. Last year we had to stop Bishorjon for one day because of Muharram, and because of that a lot of propaganda was carried out on social media,” Banerjee was quoted as saying by NDTV.
Banerjee has also written a song on the theme ‘Jaago Durga’ for biggest festival of this part of the country which will begin on October 16.
However, the same chief minister once said that dearness allowance of the government employees are not a right and even went to the extent of saying “Don’t bark like dogs for DA.” To which the Calcutta High Court last Friday ruled that more than one million employees and pensioners have a legal to inflation-linked dearness allowance by over-ruling state appellate tribunal (SAT).
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