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Bengal

Over 33L houses built under Bangla Awas Yojna: Subrata

Over 33L houses built under Bangla Awas Yojna: Subrata
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Kolkata: The state government constructed about 33,87,000 houses under the Bangla Awas Yojna scheme spending Rs 39,993 crore, veteran Trinamool Congress leader and state minister for Panchayats and Rural Development department, Subrata Mukherjee, said on Thursday.

He was addressing a press conference at Trinamool Bhavan on Thursday afternoon. Listing the work done by the rural development department of the TMC government, Mukherjee said the economy of the countryside has improved manifold since the party came to power in 2011.

Mukherjee said under the Gitanjali Prakalpa, another 3,90,000 houses were built at an expenditure of Rs 3,550 crore. Under the housing for all scheme of the state Urban Development department, 4,30,000 houses were built at a cost of Rs 7000 crore.

He said when Trinamool Congress came to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said 80 per cent of the people stay in the villages and steps would be taken to improve their living. "When we came to power in 2011, Bengal ranked 27th or 28th in terms of Panchayat level work. Now, the situation has improved to such an extent that the department is fetching national and international awards," he said. "We(TMC) work for the people. Show us any other political party in the country which is going from door to door", he said referring to 'Duare Sarkar' programme of TMC.

He said the Mission Nirmal Bangla had been a great success. "Between 2011- 20, a total of 90,67,000 house toilets have been constructed. The toilets have been maintained regularly. Rs 5298 crore has been spent to make the mission a success," he remarked. Nadia had become the country's first open defecation free ( ODF) district in the country.

The Panchayats and Rural development department has given job cards to 1.37 crore families under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( MGNREGA) scheme. Around 3.6 crore workers have been employed under the scheme and 250 crore person days have been generated. The total income of the workers have reached Rs 58, 454 crore. He said thousands of migrant workers who came back to the state had been absorbed under MGNREGA. Many water bodies have been dug up in rural areas where pisciculture is being carried out. This has resulted in the improvement of the financial condition of thousands of people.

He said the rural connectivity has gone up over the past decade because of the construction of roads. Between 2011-20, 88,841 km of rural roads have been constructed at a cost of Rs 26, 652 crore.

However, from Independence till 2011 only 39,705 km of rural road had been constructed. "After coming to power, we found that the erstwhile Left Front government had told the Centre that no more funding to set up rural roads was required. However, the Zila Parishads which were under the control of CPI(M) had requested the state government to set up rural roads for the benefit of the people," he said.

The minister stated that the Joy Bangla scheme had given financial assistance of Rs 1,000 per month to the senior citizens living below the poverty line. "Nearly, 11,38,554 people have been benefited under the scheme and a sum of Rs 7,580.35 crore was spent on the scheme. Under the Samabyathi scheme, a total of 8.51 lakh families have been benefited," he added.

Mukherjee said the pro-people government policies have helped all sections of the rural populace in improving their living standards.

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