BJP leader Amit Shah on Thursday promised to implement the seventh pay commission in West Bengal if his party is elected to power in the upcoming state assembly elections, due in March-April.
At a rally in Namkhana to kick off the last phase of the party’s flagship ‘Parivartan Yatra’, Shah said, “Our aim is not just to replace Mamata Banerjee government with a BJP government. We want a socio-economic change in Bengal.”
“It’ll not merely be a change of the regime. This change will be for the dues of the farmers, for the respect of the women and for the rights of the poor. In Bengal, we need a government which can work in tandem with the Modi government.
“The economic condition of Bengal is so poor that even the state government employees don’t get salaries according to the seventh pay commission,” the Union Home Minister added.
Shah was also seen invoking the ongoing protests by the para teachers, who had recently stepped into a canal near Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s residence to press for a salary hike.
“The para teachers are protesting here. They went down into Adi Ganga to demonstrate. I give my words that after coming to power we’ll create a high-level committee to increase their salary,” he said.
The defacto BJP’s second-in-command was also seen assuring the fishing community that it would be given an annual sum of rupees 6,000 as similar to the farmers.
“We’ll announce a lot of welfare programmes for the development of the fishing community. We’ll give rupees 6,000 to 4 lakh fishermen,” he said.
Shah started his recent tour of Bengal with a visit to the Bharat Sevashram Sangha at Rash Behari Avenue in Kolkata in the morning followed by his rally at Namkhana and a visit to the Kapil Muni Ashram at Gangasagar.
Shah also had lunch with a refugee’s family in what appears to be an expression of solidarity with the people promised citizenship by the BJP.