Asok slams govt; mocks Mamata’s working style

SNS, Siliguri, 13 February 2014: Though former state urban development minister, Mr Asok Bhattacharya, today welcomed a separate health directorate for north Bengal and mockingly ‘appreciated’ chief minister Miss Mamata Banerjee's ‘style’ of political canvassing from an official platform, he vehemently criticised her visit to the region.

"We welcome the state government's decision to set up a separate health directorate for north Bengal. But the state could have formed it from Kolkata itself and there was no need to set up Uttarkanya by spending over Rs 60 crore and to hold a Cabinet meeting here at the cost of Rs 1 crore, including advertisements," Mr Bhattacharya said.

According to him, the Cabinet meeting at Uttarkanya is nothing new, as he said the state government, under the leadership of former chief minister, the late Siddharatha Shankar Ray, used to hold such meetings even in the districts.

“Nineteen directorates were set up for north Bengal during the Left regime," he claimed. "We can learn from her how the state can blow its own trumpet without actually implementing projects and without working out on the field,” the former minister mockingly said. “Many projects, which the government published in daily newspapers in the form of advertisements during her regime, were actually implemented during the Left regime, and without the media hype,” he said.  According to him, a case in point is the decision to make Buniadpur a municipality. “People are jubilant in Buniadpur, following the state's decision to make it a municipal area. But nobody knows the role the erstwhile government played in converting the sub-divisional town, which was being controlled by the panchayat, into a municipal area,” he added.

According to him, 21 sub-divisional towns had been proposed as municipal areas during his last term and that the governor had given a nod for six of the proposals in 2010-11. Of them, only one, particularly Buniadpur, was declared as a municipal area, he said.

In an apparent bid to counter the common people's appreciation for the north Bengal mini secretariat, Mr Bhattacharya said: "Uttarkanya is not an example of decentralisation of power.