The Trinamool Congress-led government in West Bengal launched one of its biggest outreach drives to connect with people over the next two months, starting Tuesday with a focus on the assembly polls coming year.
A senior official of the state government said, “The Duare Sarkar scheme will highlight around a dozen government programmes and address grievances of those left out.”
Across all 344 blocks in the state at least four camps would be set up in every village and civic body between December 1 and January 28. At these camps, officials would help people with various government facilities, like MGNREGA job cards, health cards, caste certificates, and ration cards.
The Mamata Banerjee-administration has already directed the district administrations to stress on the Bangla Sahayata Kendra, a chain of centres at the grass root level for free information about various government schemes.
Another senior official stated, “The state government has deployed more than 6,800 people across 3,400 such centres to provide information to the people about government projects and facilities and help them access those.”
People can get information of around 240 public services from around 38 departments from these centres, free of cost.
The BJP has criticized the state government over the Duare Sarkar scheme, asking it to clarify if it is a government programme or an outreach programme of the TMC ahead of the elections. The ruling party of the state-TMC is likely to face a stiff challenge from the BJP which had won 40% of the vote share in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and bagged 18 out of the 42 seats in the state.
“This is a revolutionary step taken by our government to ensure that no one is left out. All those who are eligible for the schemes will get the benefits. For example, Swastha Sathi (health scheme) will cover the entire population of the state,” Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim said while inaugurating a ward office. The 11 schemes will be made available to the beneficiaries through camps set up for the purpose, he said. The camps will be functional from 10 am to 4 pm every day, an official said.
The various schemes promoted in the outreach include the globally acclaimed ”Kanyashree”, a cash transfer programme aimed at retaining girls in schools and preventing their early marriage, ”Khadya Sathi” which aims at ensuring food security for 90 percent of the population and ”Sikhashree”, a one-time grant to SC and ST students studying in classes 5-8 to reduce their dropout rates.
Other schemes include ”Rupashree”, a one-time grant of ₹ 25,000 to poor families during their daughters’ marriage, ”Jai Johar” for the betterment of STs, ”Taposili Bandhu” pension scheme for SCs and ”Aikyashree” scholarship programme for students from minority communities.
BJP leader in the state, Dilip Ghosh stated that TMC is carrying out election campaign and outreach using public money to which a TMC leader retorted that the BJP at the centre needs to answer on its squandering of public money.
The author is a student member of Amity centre of happiness
