Mamata Banerjee on Thursday announced the removal of the Bengal food and supplies department secretary on the back of complaints that over 10 per cent of the state’s 9 crore ration card-holders had not received the full month’s allotment at one go to help them tide over the lockdown crisis.
Manoj Agarwal, a 1990-batch IAS officer, was late in the evening replaced with P.A. Siddiqui, who had been serving as the finance department secretary. Agarwal has been sent to compulsory waiting, during which he will have no assignment.
“We are appointing a new secretary for the food and supplies department because 10 per cent of the beneficiaries could not be given (even) half of their monthly allotment despite repeated instructions,” the chief minister told a news conference at Nabanna on Thursday.
Sources said the immediate trigger behind the move was large-scale agitations at Basirhat and Murshidabad since Wednesday over failure to get foodgrains from ration shops.
At the media conference, Mamata offered an explanation on why some people did not get their monthly allotment of 5kg of rice despite the government’s announcements.
“Nothing was kept ready as nobody knew that Covid-19 would hit the country. In most areas, the monthly allotment of 5kg of rice was given. But in some areas, rice could not be stocked as per the requirement because of paucity of space,” the chief minister said.
A section of bureaucrats was unhappy with the move. They said the department was facing a scarcity of rice for supply to the ration dealers for two reasons. First, politicians, particularly from the ruling Trinamul Congress, had forced the department to give rice to them for distribution after the lockdown. Second, the food and supplies department did not get enough supply of rice from the rice mills as they could not function properly during the lockdown.
DMs transferred
West Burdwan DM Shashank Sethi and Darjeeling DM Deepap Priya have been transferred. A few days ago, a policeman had been injured in a clash between cops and villagers over setting up a quarantine centre in West Burdwan.