WB: PRAYING FOR A PAYOFF
Mamata hopes doles for Durga Puja will win Hindu hearts and votes
She knows how to pamper them. Twenty-five rural Durga puja committees and another 3,000 in cities are being given grants of Rs 10,000 each ahead of the four-day festivities in West Bengal. They will also be eligible for a waiver of licence fees and reduced power tariffs. Mamata Banerjee’s largesse comes as a happy pujo gift, particularly for rural communities.
Although successive political parties have patronised Durga puja celebrations in the state, they have never been so generous. The payouts are expected to cost the state exchequer Rs 28 crore. This is besides the Rs 640 crore given to some 16,000 youth clubs in Kolkata over the past six years.
The ruling Trinamool Congress government is using the occasion to firm up its ‘Hindu’ credentials in the face of a belligerent BJP. Mamata believes the gesture will dilute the saffron party’s repeated ‘Muslim appeasement’ charge against her.
Most puja committees comprise people from different professions, castes, communities and political affiliation, which means the ruling TMC will be directly engaging with a cross-section of people—and voters.
Veteran Congress leader Arunava Ghosh says the state government’s move is meant to benefit TMC cadres, who control most puja committees. Revolutionary Socialist Party of India leader Ashok Ghosh, who has filed a PIL in the Calcutta High Court, says, “This government has little respect for the law and the Constitution.”
Analysts say Mamata’s decision to fund Durga puja committees in rural areas is a replication of the BJP move last year to finance over a thousand village-level puja celebrations. Rabindra Bharati University scholar Biswanath Chakrabarty says it’s a “damage control exercise” after the vociferous BJP campaign, in which saffron leaders including Amit Shah accused Mamata of favouring Muslim festivals over Durga puja.
Legal experts say the CM’s puja dole could well attract judicial strictures, as her earlier move to pay monthly stipends to Muslim imams and muezzins did in 2012, wherein the high court stopped it in 2013.
Acknowledging that the courts might strike down the puja dole, a senior TMC minister says, “The move has signalled that we are secular and as Hindu as some other parties claim they are.”
Meanwhile, amid reports that the Majherhat Bridge, which collapsed on September 4 because the state finance department delayed the release of Rs 2 crore for repair and maintenance, opposition parties accused the state government of being indifferent to public safety while splurging money to nurture vote banks.