Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday paid a surprise visit to state secretariat Nabanna and staged a poster campaign on the “utilisation of central funds allocated to the state government.”
Adhikari went to the state secretariat on a day when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her party MPs were in New Delhi where she met Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding the release of dues to the state.
The senior BJP leader, who was accompanied by party MLAs Shankar Ghosh, Vishal Lama and Chandana Bauri, entered the secretariat around 11.40 am, and had no prior appointment with any of the state government officials, a highly-placed source told PTI.
However, Adhikari later had a brief interaction with Chief Secretary H K Dwivedi at his office at Nabanna.
“We came here without an appointment because if we had informed, they would not have allowed us to enter the secretariat. There are preventive orders on gatherings under Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) in force around Nabanna and because we are law-abiding citizens, only four of our MLAs came here to tell people how this government is depriving them,” Adhikari told reporters after coming out of the state secretariat.
“The CM has gone to meet the PM to tell him that the people of West Bengal are being deprived. We have come here to reveal that it is actually this government that has misused central funds and is thus depriving the people of the state. We have given some data in support of that,” the BJP leader alleged.
He also alleged that the state government has never invited BJP MPs or MLAs to any administrative meeting and party supporters are also “deprived” of the benefits of the several central government schemes such as PM Awas Yojana, Ayushman Bharat, among others. “This is a corrupt government. Our fight against you (Mamata Banerjee) will continue,” he said.
Adhikari claimed that during his brief meeting with the chief secretary, he put forward a question on why the BJP MPs or MLAs were ignored at all administrative meetings including recently-held public distributing programmes in different places of north Bengal.
Adhikari, a source said, along with other MLAs were seen waiting at the visitors’ room at Nabanna, holding posters elaborating the “allocation of funds to the state by the Centre and how much was spent”, before the meeting with the chief secretary.
Before reaching Nabanna, Adhikari posted on X handle that he has written a letter to the PM illustrating how “numerous irregularities, unabated financial scams and unbridled corruption in West Bengal has led to wastage and siphoning of thousands of crores of central government funds, provided to the state for implementation of various central schemes”.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd