E very household in Jangalmahal will get piped water within a year-and-a-half, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced in the Assembly, this afternoon. The agency that has been assigned the job is taking time to complete the project. “Within a year-and-a-half, we will be supplying piped water to every household,” she maintained.

Justifying the state government’s move to organize fairs across the state, Miss Banerjee said the number of self-help groups in the state has gone up over the years during the Trinamul Congress government.

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During the Left Front regime, it had invested Rs 2,000 crore; now the investment has gone up to Rs 92,000 crore. “Bengal is on the move. We should feel proud of our state and not criticize it. Thousands of people visit the fairs and the sales have gone up.

The work of these artists has been appreciated globally,” she said. She said the state government has spent nine times more than the money spent by the erstwhile Left Front government in infrastructure building. “We have constructed 11,000km of roads.

The rural roads have been built with the money available from the funds of the MPs and the profit earned by the power department to construct rural roads. After coming to power in 2011, we have constructed 951 bridges at an estimated cost of Rs 7142.78 crore. Only 161 bridges were there till 2011,” she remarked. The chief minister said that stern action has been taken against the private health care establishments which have refused to accept Swasthya Sathi cards.

“We have set up a 13-member regulatory commission under the chairmanship of Justice (retd) Asim Banerjee. We have received 63 complaints and all cases have been disposed of,” she said, adding, “All private health care establishments do not have critical care units and so it has not been possible to accept all cases.”

Miss Banerjee said the state’s “…institutional delivery has reached 99 per cent from 66 per cent and our target is 100 per cent. We have set up transit camps in remote areas where mothers are kept and taken to the hospitals before delivery.” She regretted that the Centre was not giving the state government’s share from the GST collection.

“Amit Mitra was the first chairman of the GST council. Because of Covid all the states had suffered badly. We had incurred a loss of Rs 17,000. We wanted two years compensation, which the Centre did not accept. But during the pandemic, the Centre’s earnings went up. We have to repay the debts which we had inherited from the Left Front government. Despite that we have implemented so many welfare projects benefiting lakhs of people