Chief minister Mamata Banerjee will convene an administrative review meeting on Tuesday at Nabanna in an attempt to give momentum to several schemes that she promised during her Lok Sabha election campaign.
The last time the chief minister held an administrative review meeting was in January this year.
“The chief minister wants to start work after the elections at the earliest. She wants to achieve all the targets she has set before the 2026 Assembly polls. As the administration remained defunct for about three months due to the elections, the chief minister will hold the meeting to give a push for the projects,” said a senior state government official.
Sources said Mamata, during her election campaign, promised that her state government would provide at least 50 days’ work to the MGNREGA job card holders in the absence of central funds under the scheme.
Mamata is likely to lay stress on the job scheme during the meeting.
“A framework has been done to give work to more than 1 crore job card holders under the schemes initiated by the state government. Now, this has to be implemented by departments like the PWD, the PHE, panchayat, agriculture and irrigation. The chief minister is likely to give a clear directive to the departments on how to achieve the job-generating target,” said a Nabanna official.
Some departments like the PWD have made it mandatory for the agencies awarded projects in the state to employ the MGNREGA job card holders for the unskilled part of the projects.
But many other departments are yet to finalise any plan for generating jobs for the MGNREGA job card holders.
“The issue of creation of jobs is on the priority list of the state government ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls as this is one of the areas where the state government has been facing the most number of questions over the past few years. So, this issue will get the utmost importance during the chief minister's meeting,” said an official.
The chief minister has also promised to release the first installment of rural housing scheme to 11.36 lakh beneficiaries from the state exchequer, if the Centre does not release funds under the scheme.
It is still unclear how the already cash-strapped state would shoulder a burden of about ₹14,000 crore required to construct 11.36 lakh dwelling units under the scheme across Bengal.
“The chief minister can throw some light on how the state can arrange the funds by December this year when the first installment would have to be released,” said a source.
The chief minister, sources said, is likely to lay stress on the Jal Jeevan Mission scheme under which 1.77 crore households were supposed to get pipeline-based water supply.
Although the deadline for the scheme was 2024, Bengal is lagging compared to other states as the state joined the central scheme nine months after the scheme was commissioned across the country in 2019.
“The state could achieve only about 50 per cent of the target. The chief minister wants the scheme to be completed by next year. So, it is expected that the scheme would be discussed in detail during the meeting,” said a source.
