Trinamool Congress (TMC) is not a political party but a ‘private limted company’, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari said on Monday. He claimed that elections before Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming to power used to be held on three grounds – ‘Dynasticism, ethnicity, appeasement’ – which has been rooted out except for two state, West Bengal and Telangana.
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The leader of opposition in the West Bengal assembly was criticising the Mamata Banerjee-led state government against the chief minister’s decision to stage a protest over claims of Centre’s discrimination towards the state in terms of social welfare schemes. Adhikari alleged that the West Bengal government has already took ‘thousands of crores of money’ under the centrally sponsored MGNREGA scheme.
The BJP leader said that around 3.60 crore MGNREGA job card holders were registered during the time when the scheme was launched in the state. “When the Centre announced linking of the job cards with Aadhaar, the Bengal government deleted around 1 crore job card data,” Adhikari said at a press conference at BJP headquarters, adding that the state government has taken a significant amount of money on behalf of those 1 crore job cards in last 10 years that were found to be fake. “It is a big scam”.
CM Mamata Banerjee earlier announced a two-day sit-in demonstration on March 29 and 30 over the ‘Centre’s discrimination against the state’ in allocating social welfare funds. The protest will be conducted in front of the BR Ambedkar statue in Kolkata.
“In protest against the Centre’s discrimination towards Bengal, I will stage a sit-in demonstration under the statue of Dr B R Ambedkar from March 29 and continue it till the evening of March 30,” the chief minister had told reporters.
The chief minister said that the state is yet to receive its pending dues under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, claiming that the Centre had denied their dues despite doing ‘excellent work’ in the 100-day job scheme.
