BJP’s state president in West Bengal, Dilip Ghosh, and CPIM politburo member Sujan Chakraborty on Tuesday attacked the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal administration over its flagship ‘Duare Sarkar’ programme and called it an “election stunt”.

“Earlier as well, Mamara Banerjee and her party and government had announced many schemes. In reality, people did not get anything,” Ghosh said while addressing the media.

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“Only party workers were benefitted with cut money. This (Duare Sarkar) is just an election stunt. Citizens here don’t get to see their BDOs. No one listens to them. Despite name on the lists, people were not allotted homes and toilets. So today, if people receive benefits, that’s really good. But all these are just stunt keeping in mind the election,” Ghosh, the Midnapore MP, added.

Meanwhile, CPIM said that the announcement of West Bengal government’s new initiative indicated that the panchayat system in the state had broken down.

Zee 24 Ghanta quoted Chakraborty as saying, “This is clear that with the Duare Sarkar initiative the state government announced that the panchayat system has failed.”

“Has it failed so much that the government had to spend crores of money in putting Mamata Banerjee’s face as advertisements on two pages of each and every newspapers? This is just the state government’s clear expression of distrust against the panchayati system,” he added.

Meanwhile, West Bengal government’s ‘Duare Sarkar’- a mega outreach programme to deliver governement schemes at the doorstep of citizens – was launched on Tuesday.

The programme will see governement officials visiting door to door to ensure people get advantage of at least 11 schemes launched by the West Bengal administration since 2011. There will also be camps for citizens to enroll their name for a scheme.

Announcing the programme, which will last for two months from November 1 to January 31, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had said last week that benefits of government schemes and services will be delivered to eligible beneficiaries at their doorstep through camps organised in each gram panchayat and municipality area.

The flagship schemes include the globally acclaimed ‘Kanyashree’ (a cash transfer scheme aimed at retaining girls in schools and preventing their early marriage), besides ‘Khadya Sathi'( for ensuring that almost 90 per cent of the population comes under food security), ‘Sikshashree’ (one time grant given to SC and ST students from class 5 to class 8 to go to schools).

Other government schemes like ‘Rupashree (one-time financial grant of Rs 25,000 for economically stressed families at the time of their daughter’s marriage), ‘Jai Johar’ (for the betterment of ST people), ‘Taposili Bondhu’ (pension scheme for SC people), ‘Akhyashree’ (a scheme that provides scholarships to students of minority communities in the state) and MGNREGS will also be included, Bandopadhyay told reporters at the state secretariat.

“In addition, applications related to schemes, including social pensions like old age, widow, persons with disabilities implemented by any government department would be received during the course of this outreach programme for appropriate action,” West Bengal chief secretary Alapan Banerjee said as quoted by PTI