West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee pulled up the authorities of seven municipal corporations and 118 municipalities in the state for their alleged failure to ensure basic services like good roads, street lights, encroachment-free pathways and timely garbage removal.
The chief minister’s reprimand came during a video conference from Nabanna on Thursday with mayors or the heads of the board of administrators of seven municipal corporations in Calcutta, Howrah, Bidhannagar, Chandernagore, Durgapur, Asansol and Siliguri.
Although representatives of the 118 municipalities were not present in the video conference, the district magistrates were asked to pass on the instructions to the civic bodies.
The meeting assumes significance as the ruling party was trailing in 69 out of the 125 civic bodies in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
“The councillors don’t roam around in their wards and that’s why they don’t get to know about the road condition and garbage removal in their wards. Now, do you expect me to look after all these,” the chief minister was quoted as saying during the meeting.
Sources said Mamata was angry when the issue of encroachment came up during the meeting.
She even pulled Calcutta city police commissioner, Vineet Goyal, asking why the police did not do anything even if people from other states were coming to Calcutta and were setting up shops by encroaching on land.
Sources in the Trinamool Congress said the chief minister was angry with the Kolkata Municipal Corporation as the ruling party was trailing behind the Opposition parties, mainly the BJP, in more than 45 wards in the city.
Mamata Banerjee also asked senior officials to prepare a list of unused government buildings and frame a policy to sell those structures through auctions.
Sources in State Secretariat said the instruction suggested the government wanted to generate as much revenue as possible ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.
“Earlier, the state government had allowed the departments to sell off their unused plots through auctions.... Now, the government has taken a step further and decided to sell unused government buildings. It is clear that the government needs a handsome amount to run its welfare schemes ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls,” said a senior bureaucrat.
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