Mamata asks party leaders to go for massive campaign on pending central dues

Kolkata: In the wake of the forthcoming panchayat poll in West Bengal scheduled, Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee on Thursday directed her party leaders and workers to go for a massive door-to-door campaign on the mounting central dues to the state government under various centrally- sponsored schemes.

"Visit every block and tell the people about how the Union government is depriving the people of the state of their legitimate dues," the Chief Minister told the leadership of her party's East Midnapore district.

A senior member of the state cabinet said that although the Chief Minister gave this direction to the party's East Midnapore leadership, the same line of campaign will be followed in all the districts of the state in the coming days.

The Chief Minister has already made it clear that central dues to the state government is a major issue for her party against the Union government. She has already staged a two-day sit-in demonstration at the BR Ambedkar statue at Red Road in Kolkata recently. Her party MPs are regularly doing agitations in the national capital on this count.

The chief minister has also said that in the coming days she will take the movement to New Delhi and start massive demonstrations there. "Now before taking that agitation at the national level, she has decided to start the groundwork for the same within West Bengal and for that she has directed her leadership to start a door-to-door campaign at the block level on this count," the member of the state cabinet said.

On Wednesday, a group of Trinamool Congress MPs led by the party national general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee went to the office of the Union minister for rural development and Panchayati Raj, Giriraj Singh at New Delhi to raise complaints on this count. However, the meeting did not happen as the Union minister was not at his office then.