Municipal corporation to pay priests conducting last rites in Kolkata crematoriums

KOLKATA: The Kolkata Municipal Corporation has decided to pay the purohits (priests) attached to the seven KMC-run crematoriums in the city who conduct the last rites before the dead is placed on the pyre or the electric furnace. Mayor Firhad Hakim announced this in the KMC house meeting on Tuesday.
The mayor later clarified that the civic body would pay Rs 380 to a purohit per cremation.The priest’s income will thus depend on the bodies reaching the crematoriums.

The civic body isn’t giving any honorarium to the priests, a KMC official said. In 2013, the Calcutta High Court had annulled the state government’s decision to pay monthly honorarium to imams and muazzins of mosques. According to KMC, there are 49 priests attached to Keoratala, Nimtala and the five other city crematoriums that handle 250-350 bodies a day.
The KMC decision announced two days ahead of the Lok Sabha results on May 23 has grabbed eyeballs. A section of councillors saw the move as a damage control exercise after exit polls predicted a saffron surge in Bengal. “Why didn’t the KMC take this decision before?” said BJP councillor and former deputy mayor Meena Devi Purohit. The BJP councillor didn’t elaborate on the issue, saying that she will wait to see how things play out in the days to come. Even a few Trinamool councillors feared that the step at this juncture might run the risk of being termed as a “counter-appeasement” bid.
But the mayor was in no mood to read the political ramifications. “These people have no other occupation. They can’t perform pujas like some their fellow purohits. They are in dire straits. We took the decision much earlier in the mayor-in-council meeting. We couldn’t announce it because of the model code of conduct,” the mayor said. Opposition members, however, refused to buy that logic. They pointed out that the model code of conduct is still in force and will be there till the completion of the poll process.
High court lawyer and Congress leader Arunava Ghosh, who had criticized the Mamata Banerjee government over its giving monthly honorarium to imams, saw nothing wrong in the Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s decision. “The corporation is paying the purohits against a service. It is a wage that a priest is entitled to. The civic body may also pay wages to people who dig graves. This doesn’t go against the Constitution,” Ghosh said.
A division bench of Justice Pranab Kumar Chattopadhyay and Justice Murari Prasad Shrivastava had annulled the state’s decision of paying imams and muazzins on grounds that a secular state can’t discriminate people on grounds of religion.
The judgment cited earlier Supreme Court orders that made the Wakf Board responsible for the imams’ salaries and made it clear that public funds cannot be used to pay the archakas (priests) of a Hindu temple.
In another judgement, the high court had put on hold Mamata Banerjee government’s money transfers to local clubs on the occasion of Durga Puja.