The chief of a BJP-run gram panchayat in Hooghly’s Khanakul lodged a police complaint on Sunday night, accusing some of his colleagues and a local leader of looting relief materials intended for flood victims by breaking into the godown of a rural body office.

In his complaint, Kartik Ghora, the chief of Dhannoghori gram panchayat, claimed the accused looted 875 tarpaulins, two sacks of chirey (flattened rice), eight tins of gur (molasses), one sack of milk powder sachets, three sacks of biscuits and five sacks of muri (puffed rice). He named two BJP rural body members and a local party leader who allegedly looted these materials by threatening a panchayat staff member present at the office.

“It is unfortunate that those people looted relief materials meant for the poor. I went to the local block development office to obtain more relief materials when they broke into the godown and took everything,” said Ghora, the BJP panchayat chief.

Nirmal Manna, the BJP convener for the Khanakul assembly segment and one of the accused, denied the charges, claiming that he and two other gram panchayat members received the items through proper channels.

Although the police have registered a criminal case against the accused for looting relief materials, multiple sources indicated that the incident exposed the region’s poor flood management system.

Despite no official complaints being lodged, there are allegations of favouritism across Khanakul.

Local officials also failed to monitor whether relief materials were distributed by gram panchayat functionaries only to their close associates, a source in the
administration said.

Embarrassment spiked last Wednesday when people protested in front of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, saying they did not get relief materials.

“That is why she (Mamata) sent the chief secretary to oversee,” said an official. Chief secretary Manoj Pant visited flood-hit areas of Arambagh and Khanakul on Sunday.

A source said a group of villagers in Jogikundu area of Khanakul-I block protested for hours on Sunday, complaining no officials reached out to them since their area was submerged last week.

“Even the staff from the local BDO office did not visit the area while people struggled to survive. Those who lost homes are spending sleepless nights on roads,” an official said.

At least six concrete houses collapsed in Talit village of Khanakul last week. A source stated that if the police had not rescued 25 individuals trapped inside those houses in time, they could have died.

In Kagnan of Khanakul, around a dozen families whose homes were washed away in the flood had to live on the road. “No one has come to help us,” said Sanyasi Dolui, a farm labourer from Kagnan who is homeless.

A senior Trinamool Congress leader said that the situation was so dire that local police had to request several NGOs to provide cooked food and basic relief to the flood victims.

District officials claimed that despite a sufficient supply of relief materials, many people did not receive them due to lapses in ground-level
distribution.

Mukta Arya, the Hooghly district magistrate, claimed she appointed BDOs from non-affected areas to distribute relief items fairly. “There may be some complaints in a few pockets, but we are now reaching out with relief materials to each affected family through our Duare Tran drive,” she said.

Heavy rainfall is forecast for various south Bengal districts, including Hooghly, starting Tuesday.