Union Minister Anurag Thakur on Monday dismissed the protests by the Trinamool Congress in New Delhi as a ploy to distract attention from its scams. The Trinamool has alleged that West Bengal was being denied funds for centrally sponsored schemes.
“Coal scam, Sharada scam, teachers’ recruitment scam, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana scam (PMAY), Rose Valley scam, cattle smuggling scam. The scams under the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal have come before us one by one. Today, on October 2nd (Gandhi Jayanti), a corrupt MP, who is faced with serious allegations himself, has carted some of his own MPs in flights to Delhi to distract attention from his own scams,” Mr. Thakur said at a press conference at the BJP’s national headquarters in New Delhi.
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The “corrupt MP” reference was reportedly to Trinamool leader Abhishek Banerjee, who is facing investigation by the Enforcement Directorate.
Mr. Thakur alleged that the Trinamool Government in West Bengal had allotted houses meant for the poor under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to those “who already had multi-storey houses”.
“After independence, it was only Prime Minister Modi’s government that made four crore pucca houses for the poor, but the Trinamool Government, their officers, and leaders grabbed the rights of the poor,” he said. “I want to ask Mamata Banerjee why the three-storey house owners’ names were there in the PMAY, why were eligible people kept out of it? And why wasn’t action taken when the Central Government asked for it?”
He said the Union Government under Mr. Modi had given “four times more money than the UPA Government” to the State for welfare programmes.
“Under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), West Bengal was given ₹14,985 crore during the UPA Government, while the NDA in 2021 gave ₹54,150 crore. For housing for the poor, the UPA gave ₹4,466 crore, while under the NDA, West Bengal was allocated ₹30,000 crore,” he said.
Trinamool MPs, protesting against the reported denial of funds by the Union Government for the MGNREGA and other welfare programmes, would be meeting Minister of State for Rural Development Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti.
