Mamata Banerjee announced on Monday that her government would appoint as home guards one person each from the families of Bengal residents who had died in the Odisha train tragedy and those who lost their physical ability in the accident or their close relatives.
The chief minister, who said 90 people from Bengal had been killed in the rail crash, will visit Odisha again on Tuesday.
She will be accompanied by finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, industry minister Shashi Panja and health secretary N.S. Nigam. They will meet scores of injured people from Bengal who remain admitted to various hospitals in cities such as Cuttack and Bhubaneswar, besides Balasore.
“I will be travelling to Cuttack tomorrow (Tuesday) as there are around 53 patients from Bengal, who are still being treated there. Of them, 30 are critical,” said Mamata.
“In total, there are around 206 patients from Bengal, who are still being treated in hospitals across Odisha and Bengal,” said the chief minister, who is also likely to visit AIIMS, Bhubaneswar, and Midnapore hospitals on Tuesday. “All of Bengal’s ministers have divided work among themselves and are visiting patients in various hospitals and extending assistance to anyone in need.”
The chief minister interacted with journalists near the Vidyasagar Setu toll plaza where she paid her respects to four people from Bengal killed in the accident, who were brought via the thoroughfare.
“Up until now, we have received the dead bodies of 73 people from the state.... The bodies of 90 people (from Bengal) have already been identified, while we are working to identify the remaining. We are working in tremendous coordination with the (BJD-led) Odisha government because we are on great terms,” said Mamata.
She said the Bengal death count could climb further as 120-odd bodies still remained unidentified in Balasore.
The Trinamul Congress chief, who was railway minister over multiple stints during both NDA (under Atal Bihari Vajpayee) and UPA II regimes, had suggested on Monday the central responsibility of railway jobs for victim families in such accidents, asserting that she had instituted such a policy in her stint at the helm of the Rail Bhavan.
On Tuesday, she announced home-guard jobs from the state government.
“We have decided to recruit one family member of those who died as home guards…. We will do the same for those who lost their ability to work on account of injury in the accident, either to them or their kin,” said Mamata, in what sources in her party said was a “masterstroke”.
She reiterated her government’s decision of extending compensation of Rs 5 lakh each for the next of kin of the deceased, Rs 1 lakh each for those grievously injured, Rs 50,000 and Rs 25,000 for minor injuries, and assistance for even those who were not injured.
“Passengers, who might not be injured, but are undergoing trauma from the ghastly tragedy, our government will give them Rs 10,000 at first, and subsequently Rs 2,000 each for the next four months. Besides, we will provide their households with rice, dal, oil and other essentials,” said Mamata.
She said the Bengal government would distribute the compensation cheques and appointment letters at a Netaji Indoor Stadium event on Wednesday.
Asked to respond to the progress of the investigation into the accident, Mamata said: “Right now, I am more focused and interested in helping the families who have lost their loved ones and restoring the livelihood of those injured," she said.
She did, however, emphasise the need for ascertaining the real reasons for the incident instead of attempts at politicisation, suppressing facts, and blame-shifting.
“As the railway minister, I too had given the CBI the responsibility to probe the Jnaneswari Express accident (of May 2010), but there has not been any headway 12 (13) years later. Same with the Sainthia accident (of July 2010)…. There is a Railway Safety Commission that usually probes these incidents,” she said.
“The people should get to know the truth, and this is not the time to suppress facts,” added Mamata. “I would ask the political party (the BJP) making the most noise to first worry about the injured, and stand by the families who have lost their loved ones in the tragic accident, rather than pursuing a political agenda… I would rather stand by the people, than play petty political games and engage in tit-for-tat with them now.”