AITC baaki cards will take Meghalaya on a debt trap: NPP

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaJanuary 18, 2023

The National People’s Party (NPP) on Wednesday said that the promises made by AITC chief Mamata Banerjee during her election meeting in North Garo Hills are mere election promises, which sound good on paper and in publicity materials.

“They (AITC) 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 statement.

The NPP said that the WE Card Scheme is actually the rebranded name of the Lakshmir Bhandar Scheme of the West Bengal government.

“AITC government of West Bengal has a per capita debt of around Rs 59,000 in 2022-23, and this scheme is one of the reasons increasing this debt. Unsurprisingly, 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,” it said.

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Asking the people of the state not to fall victim to such hollow promises made by the AITC, the NPP said it has embarked on a mission to take the State forward and would like the citizens of the state not to get carried away by such promises.

It alleged that 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, and this scheme has also affected other schemes. 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,” it said.

The NPP said it will never allow AITC to fool its citizens with fake promises.

“We will expose them in totality. It is unclear as to from where the AITC will bring the money to implement the schemes, or if it will divert Meghalaya’s funds to West Bengal,” it said while further alleging “The registration process for the ATIC’s schemes is much flawed, with I-PAC led agents running across the state to register people, while through automated bots, the registration is spiked.”

“These schemes would cost Rs 2,000 Crore to exchequers, about 50% of State’s expenditure, leading to severe crunch in development work, food grain distribution and salary payment of government officers.  Now AITC wants to sell dreams for citizens of Meghalaya when their leader Mukul Sangma failed to do anything during his tenure,” it further added.

Further, the NPP said that 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).

“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. Meghalaya’s welfare under NPP NPP-led Government has created visible development for the State and has envisaged policies and programmes to take Meghalaya on the growth pedestal,” it said.

Meanwhile, the NPP said  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, it stated.