Kolkata 24 August : A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) was filed in the Calcutta High Court on Wednesday against the West Bengal government’s decision of giving each community Rs 60,000 to communities that have registered to celebrate the celebrations.In the PIL filed by an association of lawyers from the division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava and Justice Rajarshi Bharadwaj the petitioners have questioned the logic of granting such large sums to registered Puja committees, and particularly since the chief minister Mamata Banerjee herself acknowledged that the state is suffering through a financial crisis.
The division bench has accepted the petition, and the Chief Justice has has promised that the case will be considered on a rapid basis.The case is likely to be a challenge on the 26th of August 2022.
On the 22nd of August, during the preparatory meeting with the representatives of the various community Puja committees the chief minister declared that this year the state government will pay a sum of Rs 60, 000 for each of the 43,000 puja committees.In the previous festival, the amount was just Rs 50,000.
She also, at the same announcement, she said that she will ask the electric distribution companies in the state to provide discounts of 60% off the electric bill to Puja communities.
When she made the announcement the chief minister acknowledged that she has taken this decision despite having to face a serious cash crunch due to the inability of the Union government in paying its debts to the state.
The opposition parties described the announcement as a way to maintain the participants of the community puja societies in optimism for the panchayat election next year, and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.The economists also condemned the decision as a waste of time and avoidable particularly at a time where the state’s debt-to-gross domestic product (GSDP) ratio was in the midst of a worrying level of over 30 percent.
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