Kolkata: Ahead of panchayat elections in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is going all out to show that she has “zero tolerance” for corruption.
On 30 May, during an administrative review meeting held in the state’s Purulia district, the CM brought three tribal families from the district’s Balarampur block to the stage and had them narrate, on camera, how they had to allegedly pay bribes to get government services.
“Seated behind me are poor, upset adivasi families,” said Mamata. “They are unable to get their lands mutated and thus are being deprived of governmental schemes. I have received tonnes of complaints from members of the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes who are not being able to get their lands mutated. For the past six months, work isn’t being done properly here by the Purulia district magistrate (DM),” she added.
At the receiving end of constant allegations of deep-rooted corruption from the opposition, Mamata appears keen to portray a clean image in the run-up to the panchayat election scheduled for next year, ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
Speaking at the meeting, the CM ordered the DM to ensure that no government officials in his district seek bribes to complete their work. If her party members had indulged in such corruption, she added, she would “slap them at least four times”.
Trinamool Congress minister Chandrima Bhattacharya told ThePrint that the CM has a “zero-tolerance” policy against corruption, whether it is in the government or within the party. “Mamata Banerjee walks the talk. If there are charges of corruption, she never shies away from taking action, no matter who the person concerned is,” Bhattacharya said.
The BJP, however, sought to mock the CM’s “stern stand”, and cited the alleged School Service Commission (SSC) recruitment scam currently under investigation by the CBI to highlight the “lack of action against corruption” under her government.
“If Mamata Banerjee walked the talk, her ministers Partha Chatterjee and Paresh Adhikari, who are being probed for the SSC scam, should have been shunted. The chief minister is aware of the corruption within the government and her party but has taken no action. She only talks for the cameras,” BJP leader Priyanka Tibrewal said.
Also read: Trinamool’s cut-money was CPM’s subscription — Bengal’s long history of political ‘extortion’
Mamata’s ‘mission clean-up’
One of the people invited by the CM to tell their story at the administrative meeting on 30 May was Rajen Hebram from Purulia’s Balarampur block.
After his father’s death in 2011, Hebram said, he visited the block land and land reform office (BLLRO) to get the former’s land transferred under his name, but he was asked for money by “middlemen” to get his paperwork completed.
“I had to pay Rs 100 for photocopying each page and was told to go to a stationery store outside the office, where I had to pay Rs 2,500 to get my paperwork,” he alleged.
Another resident of Balarampur, Jadav Mahato, present at the meeting, said that he wanted to mutate his land and was asked to pay Rs 15,000 as bribe.
Mamata Banerjee then asked the inspector in-charge of Balarampur if he knew where the BLLRO was situated under his jurisdiction. She claimed that two shops opposite the government office — one shop, with a broken signboard, owned by a person named Kanali Kinkar, and the other called Priyanka Varieties — was where all the “illegal” work happened.
“When poor people come to the land reform office, they are asked to go to those two shops to understand what has to be done. Since the tribals aren’t educated, they are told to pay bribes worth Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,500 for government work and, sometimes, this amount can go up to Rs 30,000, depending on the size of the land. These are the middlemen. I want an inquiry report immediately,” she instructed the officers of Balarampur Police Station.
The CM also pulled up the Purulia Superintendent of Police, S. Selvamurugan, at the meeting, asking him if he had raided those shops or already allowed them to “flee from the Jharkhand border” along Purulia district.
Within an hour, Selvamurugan informed Mamata that two accused had been detained and their shops sealed for further investigation.
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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