By Zaidul Haque, TwoCircles.net,
Kolkata/Murshidabad: Several projects under the Multi Sectoral Development Program for Minorities are in cold storage, as the West Bengal Government has seized the power of the Gram Panchayet, Panchayet Samaity and Zilla Parishad in finalizing projects and allocating funds and assigned the same to the District Magistrate.
In Murshidabad, the district with largest Muslim population, alone about Rs 5 crore is in lurch. Further the finance budget 2013-14 of the Murshidabad Zilla Parishad has been declined. There might be political angle to it though as the Murshidabad Zilla Parishad is led by CPIM.
On 27 March 2012, State panchayet and rural development Minister Subrata Mukherjee had taken the decision to dissolve the finance power of Murshidabad under the clause of 212 of West Bengal Panchayat Act, 1973.
Not only Murshidabad Zilla Parishad, same discretionary power was exercised by State Government for the Zilla Parishad of North 24 Parganas and Nadia district also, putting several projects in these districts on hold.
In 2012, the funds allocated from Central Government to the Murshidabad District under the MSDP, were Rs 479,651,000, most of it still in cold storage.
Funds for the MSDP are allocated specially for the development to the Gram panchayet with minority concentration. However, the politics of the state is making sure that most of the funds remain frozen.
According to the Minority Affairs Ministry of India Murshidabad district of West Bengal alone got nearly 50 Cr in 2012. Grant-in-aid under the Centrally Sponsored Scheme of Multi sectoral Development Programme for Murshidabad District released Rs. 187,191,000 on 22nd March, 2012, Rs. 117,032,000 on 15th October, 2012, Rs. 76,736,000 on 21st November, 2012 and Rs. 98,692,000 on 13th December 2012.
Not only that the district administrative Official of Murshidabad declared that they could not arrange the salary for the staff of the gram panchayet, panchayet Samity, etc due to “insufficient fund” and issued an order to manage the salary from the Gram Panchayet’s own corpus or from any other available funds.
Salary of several Grampanchayet staffs and officials are pending now, as there is no money, according to the village parishad.
State politics marring several projects in Murshidabad.
Zilla Parishad ADM, Nedharam Mandal said, “All the Panchayats of Murshidabad have been told to make a temporary arrangement to pay the staff from their own funds. The Gram Panchayet and Panchayet Samity (BDO) offices have also been assured of refund against disbursement of their staff salaries.”
It is not clear, however, why the State Panchayet and rural development Minister Subrata Mukherjee took the decision to dissolve the finance power of Murshidabad under the clause of 212 of West Bengal Panchayet Act, 1973.
Subrata Banerjee said that they have occasionally been facing trouble in the Murshidabad Zilla Parishad in the development projects under the Panchayeti Raj due to non-cooperation of the Zilla Parishad governing body or committee. He claimed that the development of the Murshidabad is not affected due to seizing the finance power of Zilla Parishad.
In the Panchayet Elections of 2008, Left front alliance had got 32 seats in Zilla Parishad and Congress had got 31. Although TMC does not have a single member in the parishad, but the MLA is from the ruling party, who has the right to participate in the meeting of the Zilla Parishad committee.
Left front led body hence could not pass the finance budget either.
Murshidabad has pockets of influence for the Congress party as well as the Left Front and perhaps the ruling TMC would not want the opposition to take credit for the development projects.
State President of Social Democratic Party of India, Taidul Islam told TCN that the TMC government is depriving the people of the largest Muslim populated district in state for petty politics.