Jaigaon in North Bengal suffers from government neglect

Pramod Giri, HT, 28 Oct 2016, SILIGURI: With a population more than that of the district headquarter and being the fastest growing town in North Bengal, Jaigaon, the panchayat town in Alipurduar, desperately needs government support.

Jaigaon does international trade to the tune of hundreds of crores of rupees every day. The town has a population of more than 1.5 lakh population. However, the town located near Indo-Bhutan border speaks a lot about government’s apathy, the latest being the state government backtracking from its promise to upgrade it into a municipality.

Addressing a rally before Assembly election in Alipurduar, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that Jaigaon covering three gram panchayats of Jaigaon I, Jaigaon II and Dalsinghpara would be upgraded into a municipality. The town would also be expanded further. However, after the election she said municipality is not happening.

Wilson Champramary, the chairman of Jaigaon Development Authority (JDA) and TMC’s MLA from Kalchini said, “The state government is working to provide land lease to people and the drinking water project worth Rs 125 crore is already underway. The three gram panchayats altogether have more than 2 lakh population which is more than the population of Alipurduar.”

People in Jaigaon have no land papers and most of the development works and buildings have come up on vested land. Though the government had a plan to distribute land lease, the rate was fixed higher than that of the district headquarters. In absence of land papers, expansion of businesses and construction of houses through bank finance are a distant dream.

RS Gupta, the general secretary of Jaigaon Merchants’ Association (JMS), said the town has gained prominence after Bhutan relaxed its rules for Indian tourists. Every day, hundreds of tourists reach and camp at Jaigaon to meet the requisite formalities to enter Bhutan through Phuntsholing. Gupta said Phuntsholing is clean and managed by a municipality while Jaigaon has lots of problems which could have been easily managed and solved had the town been declared as municipality.

Though the TMC government has streamlined the functioning of the JDA and activated it, has failed to set priorities like better health facilities, parking and drainage.