Shillong, Jan 18: Reacting to AITC chief Mamata Banerjee’s claims during her rally in North Garo Hills on Wednesday, the National People’s Party (NPP) has cautioned the people of the state to be wary of the ‘mere election promises’ and ensure that the State does not fall in a debt trap, like West Bengal has.
“They have termed their baaki (credit) card – ‘We Card’ and ‘MYE’ – as revolutionary without realising that such intervention, if could be done, will take any State on a debt trap, which has happened in the case of West Bengal,” the party said in a press statement on Wednesday evening.
The party enlightened that the AITC’s much hyped ‘The WE Card Scheme’ is actually the rebranded name of the Lakshmir Bhandar Scheme of the West Bengal government. And that the West Bengal has a per capita debt of around Rs 59,000 in 2022-23, and this scheme is one of the reasons for increasing this debt.
It said 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.
Also, West Bengal’s accumulated debt for 2022-23 is expected to rise to 5.86 lakh crore, up from Rs 5.28 lakh crore as on March 31, 2022. West Bengal government is already struggling with severe financial crunch and finding it hard to keep afloat its social schemes.
As such, NPP said “with such steep mountain of debts to clear, it is clear that the All India Trinamool Congress’ (AITC) will also make Meghalaya fall into a debt trap, and leave its people to face the brunt of it.”
The party assured that NPP will not let its citizens fall victim to such hollow promises being made by AITC. “The National People’s Party has embarked on a mission to take the State forward and we would like the citizens of our State not to get carried away by such promises… National People’s Party will never allow AITC to fool its citizens with fake promises. We will expose them in totality,” he said.
It further pointed that AITC wants to sell dreams to citizens of Meghalaya whereas their leader Dr. Mukul Sangma failed to do anything during his tenure of 8 years from 2010 to 2018.
The party also shared the unemployment and joblessness statistics of West Bengal under AITC. “West Bengal has 2nd highest number of women job seekers as per employment exchange 2020 stats – 24.6 lakhs more than Meghalaya’s total women population. As per Employment exchange Stats – The largest number of jobseekers on live register during the year 2019 were in West Bengal (77.6 lakh),” it said.
“The Bengal government claimed they created 10 million jobs, but so far, the state employment exchange reportedly has nearly 3.5 million job-seekers registered.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,” it added.
On the other hand, NPP highlighted that the NPP-led Government has created visible development for the State and has envisaged policies and programmes to take Meghalaya on the growth pedestal.
“The National People’s Party (NPP) during its tenure for five years have demonstrated best practice by introducing FOCUS and FOCUS+ schemes which target farmers and producers groups. They are already on ground and people are getting benefits from it, with a coverage of more than 4.5 lakh farmers. Farming households in Meghalaya have been provided with Rs. 10,000 under the schemes. Youth Empowerment through Youth Empowered Organization (YESS) Meghalaya is targeted towards the youth. The YESS program is to create one of the most impactful youth development support system by providing monetary assistance to the youth organizations upto Rs 1 lakh to ensure greater success and impact across more communities,” he said.
