Shillong, Jan 18: The National People’s Party (NPP) on Wednesday said the promises made by Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in North Garo Hills are for the elections and sound good on paper and for publicity.
“It (AITC) has termed its baki (credit) cards, ‘We Card’ and ‘MYE Card’, as revolutionary without realising that such interventions, if done, will take any state on a debt trap, which has happened in the case of West Bengal,” the party said in a statement.
NPP said the ‘WE Card’ scheme is a version of the ‘Lakshmir Bhandar’ scheme in West Bengal.
“AITC government of West Bengal has a per capita debt of around Rs 59,000 crore in 2022-23, and this scheme is one of the reasons for this. Unsurprisingly, the Bengal government is paying between Rs 80,000 – Rs 90,000 crore as debt repayment and interest to its borrowers every year. Effectively, every citizen of Bengal has to pay Rs.8,000 as debt every year,” it said.
Asking the people of the state not to fall victim to such hollow promises of AITC, NPP said it has embarked on a mission to take the state forward and would like the citizens of the state not to get carried away by such promises.
“West Bengal government is already struggling with severe financial crunch and finding it hard to keep afloat its social schemes, and this scheme has also affected other schemes. With such a mountain of debts to clear, it is clear that AITC will also make Meghalaya fall into a debt trap, and leave its people to face the brunt of it,” it said.
“These schemes (announced by AITC) would cost Rs 2,000 crore to exchequers, about 50% of the state’s expenditure, leading to severe crunch in development work, food grain distribution and salary payment of government officers. Now AITC wants to sell dreams for citizens of Meghalaya when their leader Mukul Sangma failed to do anything during his tenure,” it added.
Unemployment in Bengal
NPP pointed out that West Bengal has the second highest number of women job seekers, as per the employment exchange 2020 statistics, which is 24.6 lakh more than Meghalaya’s total women population.
There are also 2,00,000 permanent jobs across various government departments, besides 1.5 lakh vacant teaching posts.
“Around 1.3 million applicants for clerical jobs have not got calls since 2018, while 6 lakh aspirants, who had applied for the posts of sub-inspectors and inspectors also didn’t get calls. Meghalaya’s welfare under NPP NPP-led Government has created visible development for the State and has envisaged policies and programmes to take Meghalaya on the growth pedestal,” it said.
