I'm no magician: Mamata on demand for DA by state govt employees

PTI, KOLKATA, FEB 17, 2023 : Faced with growing demands for a hike in dearness allowance (DA) by West Bengal government employees, state chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday said she is not a magician who can fulfil all wishes. Mamata asserted that her government is making its best effort to balance the needs of all. 

"I am not a magician that money will come down from the sky on demand, as sweets did in Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (movie). Money has to be collected," she said. The chief minister was referring to Satyajit Ray's 1969 fantasy film Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne' in which sweet meats descended from the sky. "Despite the Centre's deprivation, we have given three per cent DA," she said while speaking at a programme for distribution of government services in Bankura district. State finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya while presenting the budget on February 15 announced an additional three per cent of DA for government employees and others, who were demanding the same at par with the Centre. Attacking the BJP-led NDA government, Mamata claimed that the Centre is not providing funds for the 100-day MGNREGA job guarantee scheme.

"Even those who have worked under the scheme are not being given their wages under the scheme," she said. Alleging that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre is not releasing funds to West Bengal for schemes like MGNREGA, housing or road construction, Banerjee said that her government does not evict poor people, but gives them land rights. Claiming that the BJP government at the Centre was depriving the TMC-ruled West Bengal, she said: "It is as if they are giving their own money. It is our money which they are taking away on account of tax collections and state governments are entitled to their share of that." Mamata said that the people of the state want their rights and not doles. 

The chief minister said that if her brothers and sisters make progress, then only Bengal will move ahead.

Mamata, who was touring the district ahead of the panchayat election, also spoke about her government's schemes for minorities, scheduled castes and tribes and OBCs. The chief minister said that 1.5 crore people work in the MSME sector in West Bengal. Mamata on Friday sought to know why a Central team was not sent to probe the death of a mother-daughter duo in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh during an eviction drive. The duo died allegedly due to self-immolation during an anti-encroachment drive in Kanpur's Dehat district on February 13. 

 Mamata claimed that the drive in UP was being conducted to evict "poor" people. Mamata and her party TMC have been vocal about central teams being sent to West Bengal on various issues, with the most recent ones being on mid-day meal distribution and MNREGA implementation in the state. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Wednesday ordered a magisterial inquiry into the death of the mother-daughter duo in Kanpur Dehat during an anti-encroachment drive.

Claiming that the state was freed of ultra-Left terror under her party's rule, the chief minister said that earlier people could not go out of their homes in the affected Jangalmahal area, spread across Bankura, Paschim Medinipur, Jhargram and Purulia districts, owing to depredations of the Maoists. "Touchwood, no Maoist attack or ambush has taken place in the last 11 years and no one has had to stay indoors out of such fear," she said.