Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of the Opposition, on Sunday alleged that Rs 78 lakh was paid by the Bankura district administration to hire buses to ferry “students and poor beneficiaries” to an administrative meeting chaired by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday.

The Nandigram BJP MLA alleged that a sum between Rs 3 crore and Rs 4 crore was spent on the “purely political” and “unproductive” event.

“Rs 78 lakh has been paid to hire 700 buses for transporting students and poor beneficiaries to attend CM Mamata Banerjee’s so-called Administrative Meeting at Bankura on 17th Feb. Why’re students being forced to listen to political speeches at the expense of the public exchequer?” Adhikari wrote in the first of a three-tweet series.

Adhikari shared copies of documents that appeared to be official notices of how many buses were being hired from which block or municipality, how much money was being spent on buses and who was receiving the money. The documents bore the signature of the Bankura regional transport officer.

According to the LoP, if other expenses such as deployment of 8,000 police personnel, construction and decoration of the stage and canopy and logistics were counted, it could be said that around Rs 3 crore to Rs 4 crore were spent on this meeting. He urged the Bankura district magistrate and state chief secretary to disclose if this money was being diverted from central funds.

“Why such extravagance when Bengal is in a fiscal crisis?” he asked.

Trinamul state secretary Kunal Ghosh said Adhikari used to speak in favour of the meetings till 2020. “As he joined the BJP to save himself from arrest in the Narada scam, he is tweeting against the meetings. CM has taken the secretariat to the grassroots, which is why schemes are being delivered to beneficiaries fast,” he said.