Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday asked senior Bengal government officials, particularly chief secretary H.K. Dwivedi and land and land reforms secretary Smaraki Mahapatra, to conduct a probe to ascertain whether any of her relatives had encroached on government land.
“If you find that government land was encroached on by any of my relatives, you bulldoze the structures set up on such land. For this, you don’t even need to inform me,” said Mamata during a news conference at Nabanna on Wednesday, quoting herself as saying so to Dwivedi at a cabinet meeting earlier in the day.
Sources said Mamata had raised the issue during the cabinet meeting, where she had told officials that some people — sections of the media — were alleging that government land had been grabbed by her kin. “Do you have any kind of information in this regard?” the chief minister apparently asked Dwivedi, who said he was not aware of any such thing. She then asked senior officials to conduct an inquiry.
Mamata had first broached the issue in her speech at a Trinamul Chhatra Parishad rally in Calcutta on Monday. She tried explaining that the land on Harish Chatterjee Street in Calcutta that she and some of her immediate family members occupied was a thika plot. The chief minister said her forefathers had been allowed to settle on the thika plot as the subjects of Rani Rashmoni — the 19th century zamindar and philanthropist who owned vast swathes of land that is now the core of Calcutta.
“I found out some television channels had accused me and my family of having occupied the land illegally…. I find this grievously offensive,” said the chief minister on Wednesday.
“I have absolutely no knowledge of this. Never ever I had to consider these things in all my life…. We have, for generations, lived in Kalighat on Rani Rashmoni’s land, as thika tenants, as her subjects back then, on lease,” Mamata added.
Sources have said Mamata lives on a piece of thika land on 30B Harish Chatterjee Street as a tenant, for which she has to give rent annually to the thika controller, who is a land and land reforms department official.
“These plots belonged to the erstwhile zamindars of Calcutta. They had given settlement rights to these thika tenants. When the zamindari system was done away with, the state government started looking after the welfare of thika tenants,” said a senior government official.
Firhad Hakim, the Calcutta mayor and urban development minister, said on Wednesday that the government had initially planned to repeal the Thika Tenancy Act, after coming to power in 2011.
“But later, we realised that once the Act was repealed, the land would go back to the surviving descendants of the zamindars, who would invariably sell those plots to big corporate houses. If that happens, the poor people living on the thika land would be thrown out of the city,” he said.
But then, the government decided to amend the Act, allowing the tenants to reconstruct their buildings and construct G+4 structures. “Now, any thika tenant can construct new houses on their thika land, by taking permission from the thika controller,” said Hakim.
Ministers present at the cabinet meeting said Mamata was visibly upset over her personal probity being questioned by a section of the media. “Politics now has become so incredibly dirty… had I known earlier, I would never have come here,” she said at the news conference.
“The media says, ‘sources claim’, and run stories according to their will, without any evidence. Random people are being accused. Imagine, if without any evidence, people question the media, how will they feel? This is what the media is doing,” said Mamata.
“Don’t defame the Trinamul Congress family. We won’t take it lightly. We have never encouraged corruption, but the media is busy defaming me and my party,” she added.
