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News Desk: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday has announced plans to build 20 lakh houses for Scheduled Cast (SC) and Schedule Tribe (ST) people across the State in the coming five years.
The Chief Minister is also working on organising a ‘mega samellan’ (convention) of West Bengal Sahitya Dalit Academy in November-December, where five dalit representatives from all the States will participate to exchange ideas for the development of people belong to the SC and ST community.
While chairing the West Bengal Scheduled Caste Advisory Council meeting at the State secretariat ‘Nabanna’ on Wednesday, she said, “Our government is committed to the welfare of the ST, SC community. Therefore, we have decided to build nearly 20 lakh houses in the next five years for them.”
She further said, “We will conduct a survey through drones to get aerial pictures of how many people are living in kutcha houses and need to be renovated and how many pakka houses need to be constructed in every district. Drones will make our job easier to survey.”
The Chief Minister asked senior bureaucrats to organise another meeting of all the board members (like Namasudra Welfare Board, Nasya Development Board, Rajbonshi Development Board, Kamtapuri Development Board, Tribal Development Board) in September.
On safety of the SC and ST community, she instructed the Director-General of Police to be extra vigilant and to act promptly on all the complaints about the security and safety of SC and ST people in the State.
“The police must take stern action against those who will be involved in crime against SC and ST,” she said.
The CM has also advised leaders to work for all irrespective of their political colours. “A leader must lead the people. Don’t judge them with their political identity. All are equal. Don’t categorise them with A, B, C and D. Work for all because you all are mass leaders and not specific to anyone or any party,” she said.
Manoranjan Byapari, the TMC MLA from Balagarh in the Hooghly district and head of Dalit Sahitya Academy, who was also present in the meeting requested Banerjee to suggest a name for 45 dalit community centres across the State. Responding to Byapari, Banerjee asked him to keep the names of all the community centres after B R Ambedkar.
Recently, while announcing the State budget, Banerjee allocated Rs 350 crore for schools that would address the needs of the SC and ST communities.
Then, some of the major announcement made by the Chief Minister was Rs 50 crore for hundred new English medium schools for SC/ST and poor people, nearly 900 new schools for Ol-chiki, Hindi, Nepali, Urdu, Kamtapuri, Rajbonshi, Kurmali, English languages in Bengal along with 200 schools for Rajbongshi language speakers.
