KOLKATA: With the threat of BJP looming large on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is leaving no stones unturned to retain her vote base before the 2018 panchayat polls.
BJP president Amit Shah has instructed party workers in the state to form booth-level committees comprising three to five people and reach out to all the gram panchayats in the state before the polls.
He is slated to meet top state BJP leaders in January.
Alarmed by the BJP’s preparations, the government has planned to take up rural development programmes and at the same time, carry out social engineering to counter BJP’s high-pitched Hindutva agenda.Accordingly, the state government has decided to construct 13,000 km of rural roads before the panchayat polls at a cost of `3,100 crore, while the Centre would pay the remaining 60 per cent of the expense pegged at around Rs 7,800 crore.
Also, after forming the country’s first Scheduled Caste Advisory Board, with whom the Chief Minister recently conducted a meeting in Kolkata, Banerjee also proposed to form an OBC Advisory Board.
West Bengal has a 26 per cent Dalit population and 20 per cent OBC population, most of who are rural residents.
The formation of these boards can be seen in line with TMC’s call for Bahujans in the state to unite and defeat Hindutva forces.
The state government had initially proposed to construct 7,000 km rural roads. This has been almost doubled to 13,000 km in view of the panchayat polls.
“Instead of the previous plan of 7,000 km, we will now build 13,000 km rural roads, but we will have to shell out 40 per cent of the costs as per the new norms,” said Subrata Mukherjee, Panchayat and Rural Development Minister.
Earlier, the Centre used to bear the entire amount for road construction in states, but the current government mandated the states to bear 40 per cent of the expenses.
Soon after overthrowing the 34-year-old Left Front rule in 2011, the TMC government focused on rural development.
Political observers say the TMC sailed through 2016 Assembly polls, and increased its tally, precisely because of these rural projects despite its senior ministers being allegedly involved in Saradha and Narada scams.