Shillong, Feb 23: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday said the All India Trinamool Congress (AITC) wants to bring a “corrupt culture” in the state.
Addressing media persons, BJP spokesperson Mariahom Kharkrang said a party from West Bengal that talks about bringing 3 lakhs jobs and giving youth allowance to the young voters has been caught in the West Bengal School Service Commission (SSC) scam.
“The scam is about illegally recruiting teachers and other non-teaching employees in Bengal’s schools. This can be best called TMC’s flagship model of employment. Do we want this model in Meghalaya?” he asked.
The North Shillong candidate said similarly, with policies that are aimed to improve the working condition of people below the poverty line like MNREGA, a rampant rise in corruption has been seen in the TMC ruled State where the BDOs are directed to collect the ‘cut money’ in return for the issuance of job cards.
“Supervisors for the MNREGA scheme are appointed by the local TMC elected representatives through BDO offices who are tasked with the collection of the cut money. Beneficiaries who are unable to pay such cuts face blockage of their job cards,” Kharkrang said while adding, “This is the corrupt culture that TMC wants to bring to the State like Meghalaya”.
He said a court on Wednesday rejected the bail petition of the wife and son of TMC MLA Manik Bhattacharya, former president of the West Bengal Board of Primary Education.
Both of his family members have now been sent to judicial custody. Well, it isn’t hard to understand what sort of corruption these family-run parties deal with, he added.
Manik is in custody in connection with irregularities in recruitment for government-aided primary schools SCC Scam.
The former IPS officer also slammed the TMC leaders for their failure to resolve the ban on coal mining when they were in the Congress.
“Coal, which is the critical source of employment for the voters of Meghalaya, has remained banned since the Congress’ era. The current TMC group of incompetent leaders were in INC then, did they even give a genuine attempt to resolve the issue of Coal mining?” he said.
Castigating the TMC for making false promises with regards to West Bengal Student Credit Card Scheme, Kharkrang said that the Student Credit Card scheme was a pre-poll promise for 10th standard passed students to avail collateral-free loans of up to Rs. 10 lakhs for higher studies at a nominal interest rate but the state government has been failing to bring in beneficiaries to make the scheme successful.
He said the state government has received 1,12,745 applications, out of which only 20,000 were sanctioned, and only around 3,000 students have actually been provided with credit cards – a coverage of not even 3% in the entire State.
“The authorities in West Bengal are known to ask the applicants to bring irrelevant documents to create dubious grounds for rejection. Many of those selected have been granted provisional status only. They were not given approval letters by the implementing authorities. The state government has failed to solve this issue,” he said while alleging that the TMC’s Meghalaya Youth Employment (MYE) Card is another false hope and promise to cheat on the voters of Meghalaya like what they have done with the voters of West Bengal.
Attacking the NPP and its promise to create 5 lakh jobs, the BJP leader alleged that there is a general perception in the state that one has to be close to the NPP leadership in order to get government jobs. The government job recruitment system lacks transparency and the majority of the educated youths are now moving out of State in search of better jobs and opportunities.
