KOLKATA: A day after West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari urged big-budget community Durga Puja committees across the state not to accept government honorarium, several major crowd-puller organisers in Kolkata decided on Tuesday not to apply for the Rs 1 lakh assistance announced by the CM.
Rajdanga Naba Uday Sangha, one of the seven big puja committees, decided instead to donate Rs 1 lakh to the CM’s Relief Fund, according to its chairperson and state BJP spokesperson Keya Ghosh.
The other six committees are Santoshpur Lake Pally, Tala Pratyay, Chorbagan Sarbojanin, Naktala Udayan Sangha, Santosh Mitra Square and Phoolbagan Sarbojanin.
The committees announced on social media that they would not apply for the government honorarium.
Adhikari also announced that the immersion carnival, a multi-crore annual mega show introduced by the erstwhile Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress government on Red Road in Kolkata, would be stopped.
The CM made the announcements while holding a meeting with community puja organisers on Monday ahead of the Durga Puja festival in October. He said the state government would give Rs 1 lakh as honorarium to each committee, instead of the Rs 1.10 lakh provided by the previous government.
“Earlier, in a programme I had assured that honorarium would be given to puja committees of 'small' budgets. I don’t want misuse of the chief minister’s power. I would propose the committees, which are financially strong (big budget), not take the fund. But committees with small financial budgets can take an honorarium of one lakh rupees,” Adhikari said.
“It’s not justified what the previous chief minister had done by giving Rs 1.10 lakh to puja committees belonging to all categories whether small or big. She used to announce, saying, ‘What I had given to you (puja committees) last year, let’s make one lakh rupees this year.’”
“We do this kind of bargaining in morning fish market. She had hiked the donation amount to Rs 1.10 lakh from Rs 25,000. This is not justified. But she could not make any gain in elections,” he said.
The Trinamool Congress was voted out of power by the BJP in the Bengal Assembly elections, bagging only 80 of the 294 Assembly constituencies in the state.
BJP MLA from Baranagar constituency and puja organiser Sajal Ghosh said on social media that the Santosh Mitra Square puja committee, with which he was associated, had not accepted government assistance in the past and would continue to do so this year.
Committees seeking the assistance will have to apply through their respective police stations. The applications will subsequently be scrutinised and forwarded through the police administration for processing under the prescribed government procedure.
“Many thanks to the Honorable CM for the announcement. We humbly state that we are not accepting the grant,” Santoshpur Lake Pally said in a social media post.