Kolkata: With an eye on the upcoming Assembly Election in West Bengal, the Trinamul Congress government hiked the monthly financial assistance under its poll-winning women-oriented welfare scheme, Lakshmir Bhandar, by Rs 500 and introduced a new scheme offering Rs 1500-monthly unemployment allowance in its last budget, a vote on account, on Thursday.
The hike in Lakshmi Bhandar scheme, which now covers around 2.21 crore women beneficiaries in the state, will see a female member of a general category family and a female member of a reservation (SC/ST/OBC) category family getting monthly Rs 1500 and Rs 1700 respectively from this month itself.
State Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya made an additional annual allocation of Rs 15,000 crores for the project in her budget of around Rs 4.06 lakh crores, presented at the Assembly. She also informed that the government already received fresh applications from 20.62 lakh women to join the popular scheme.
Ms Bhattacharya also promised several other doles for the youth and unorganised sector. These include a monthly Rs 1500 allowance to the Madhyamik-passed unemployed youth in the age group of 21-40 years under Yuba Sathi scheme for a maximum period of five years, Rs 1000 monthly salary hike for the civic police volunteers, anganwadi workers and para-teachers and Swasthya Sathi scheme coverage to online delivery workers.
Ms Banerjee howeve claimed later that the budget was not aimed at the upcoming polls. The session, however, witnessed an unusual turn of events before the budget presentation when Governor CV Ananda Bose abruptly ended his speech to the House within four minutes of starting it. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee immediately requested him to complete his address.
But the governor refused. Ms Banerjee looked embarrassed. Leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari and other opposition MLAs hailed the governor’s decision. Mr Adhikari alleged that Ms Banerjee wanted Mr Bose to praise her government and criticise the Centre in his speech drafted by her government but the governor avoided it after finding the reference of Ghatal Master Plan to those projects lacking central government’s assistance.
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