TMC Makes WB Budget LS Poll-centric with Sops

Kolkata: With an eye to increase Trinamul Congress votebank in the Lok Sabha Election in West Bengal, the Mamata Banerjee government has doubled the doles under its women-oriented popular scheme, Lakshmir Bhandar, and the dearness allowance (DA) for its employees in the state budget. State finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, who tabled the budget of ₹3.60 lakh crores in the Assembly on Thursday, announced the hike in Lakshmi Bhandar, a poll-winning initiative for the TMC in the 2021 with a monthly financial assistance of ₹500 to a female member of a family earlier.

Ms Bhattacharya stated that the women belonging to SC/ST communities and other category would now get monthly ₹1,200 and ₹1,000 respectively. She also informed the House that the state government employees’ DA, which was increased by four percent in January, has been hiked by another four per cent to be effective from May this year. The attempt is seen as a measure by the ruling TMC to placate a growing discontent over the outstanding DA among the state government employees who are deployed in election duty. 

The state



finance minister further proposed to increase civic, village police and green police volunteers’ monthly contractual remuneration by ₹1000 and their absorption from 10% to 20% in the state police force.

To counter the Centre's 100-day job scheme, Ms Bhattacharya introduced a 50-day work scheme, Kormoshree, to the job card holders. 

The budget presentation however witnessed frequent disruptions, at least twice, due to noisy protests by the BJP MLAs. While speaker Biman Banerjee had a tough time in pacifying them, chief minister Mamata Banerjee intervened and called the opposition members “anti-Bengal”. The TMC chief also reminded them that though 47 opposition MPs were suspended in the parliament recently, she would not want the same to happen to the BJP MLAs. She later said that her government would pay the funds from May to build 11 lakh houses to the owners under PM Awas Yojana if the Centre does not release the dues under the scheme. 

On the other hand, leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari slammed the pro-people budget.