Charge for water

The Punjab government should start billing water supply to residents using meters. This will lead to substantial revenue gain for local bodies and plugging of water leakages. A huge quantity of this precious resource will also be saved every year. There will be a fall in number of complaints also, besides making consumers happy.

SC Dhall Zirakpur

NEW DELHI: The BJP is preparing to launch an information blitzkrieg in poll-bound West Bengal, particularly in TMC strongholds, to draw the people’s attention to the loss of benefits resulting from the non-implementation of central schemes in the state.

According to party functionaries privy to the details, the BJP is keen on pivoting the election campaign in Bengal on economic development and wants to highlight the discrepancies in the implementation of schemes such as housing for the poor, water supply and gas connections for the poor.

“In TMC strongholds such as Kolkata Uttar, Kolkata Dakshin and parts of Jadavpur, the party will carry out targeted canvassing, reaching out to women, the poor and Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes who have been deprived of the benefits of the schemes,” said a senior party leader aware of the campaign strategy, requesting anonymity.

The BJP is seeking to attract the 35.9 million women voters who make up 49% of the electorate, the SC communities that account for 23.51% of the population and the STs that are 5.8% of the population, according to the 2011 census.

In the 2019 general elections as well as a clutch of assembly polls including in Bihar last year, the BJP accrued electoral gains from leveraging the response to schemes that offered subsidised housing for the poor, free gas connections for households that relied on wood and other polluting fuels for cooking, rural electrification and construction of toilets to end open defecation.

Since women voters were perceived to have played a key role in the party’s performance; it wants to create a constituency of women supporters as well.

Union minister for Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat told HT in an interview that the West Bengal polls will be contested on the plank of development for the first time. Lashing out at the TMC government, he said nearly 7 million small and marginal farmers in the state had lost out on cash transfers of ₹6,000 per year. TMC says it has schemes aimed at providing health-care and empowerment of women and the EWS.