Gurung interfere blame on DM

Vivek Chhetri, TT, Darjeeling, Dec. 4: Bimal Gurung today accused Darjeeling district magistrate Puneet Yadav of "unnecessarily interfering" in matters related to transferred subjects and said the official would be responsible if relations between the state and the GTA went sour. 

The GTA chief executive's comments come few days after he met chief minister Mamata Banerjee in Calcutta.

"I held a meeting with the chief minister recently and spoke to her about the issue of transferred subjects. The chief minister even directed the home secretary to visit Darjeeling soon to sort out the issue. However, the district magistrate is unnecessarily interfering in issues related to the transferred subjects. If the relations between the state government and the GTA sour, the DM will be responsible," Gurung said at a new conference today.

So far, 34 of the 40 transferred subjects have been fully or partially handed over to GTA.

"The food and supplies department is a transferred subject but the administration has been harassing ration shops (owners) for the past four-five days. I spoke to the home secretary regarding this today and he said he would take up the matter with the chief secretary. If the DM thinks that he is bigger than the acts and agreement (of the GTA) then let him run the show. We will close our offices. We might even take legal action," Gurung said.

The comments seem to have been triggered by raids across the hill town by the district consumer protection council, chaired by the Darjeeling district magistrate, on December 2.

According to a resolution adopted by the council on November 28, it had been decided that joint inspections/visits/raids would be conducted on "hospitals, markets, ration shop etc" in Darjeeling on December 2 to check if there was fair trade and the establishments had valid documents.

Although Gurung did not mention the word "raid" during the 20-minute news conference today, it was apparent that the GTA chief executive was peeved at the council's decision.

The council's Darjeeling subdivision committee has representatives from consumer affairs, co-operative society, food and supplies and health and family welfare departments, which are all transferred subjects. Officials of other departments like information and cultural affairs, BSNL, LICI and WBSEDCL are also in the 14-member committee.

Yadav today said: "I am not trying to interfere. The DCPC is a statutory body under the state consumer protection committee. It was formed long ago. Relations with the GTA has been most cordial and we have not had problems. There might have been some misunderstanding about how the council operates but that can be sorted out through discussions. The public's response (to the raids) was positive."

During the raid it was found many shops did not have valid papers and were selling items at rates higher than the maximum retail price. A report has been sent to the departments concerned.