In what is being dismissed as a “pre-poll gimmick” by Opposition parties, the West Bengal Government on Friday said it would initiate steps to take over ailing Dunlop India and Jessop & Co from Ruia Group.
The State Government is appointing an advisory committee headed by senior Minister Subroto Mukherjee, Amit Mitra and Purnendu Bose, State Education Minister Partho Chatterjee said on Friday. And if everything goes right then a Bill will be brought in the ongoing Budget Session itself, he maintained.
Curiously a Parliamentary Committee had last year visited the Hooghly unit of the closed Dunlop factory to explore ways for its revival. Trinamool MP Sultan Ahmed was a part of that team.
“The Government has decided to take over the closed Dunlop and Jessop industries as a part of our Chief Minister Mmata Banerjee’s endeavour to revive closed and sick units in the interest of poor workers,” Chatterjee said inviting prompt criticism from the opposition outfits.
Reacting to the development State Opposition leader Suryakanto Mishra said “it is an open secret that Bengal under Mamata Banerjee has become a veritable Waterloo for aspiring industries. Her party has forced big industries to flee fro the State. Now with the elections approaching she wants to show the people some work. But this is another misleading step she is taking like the one she took in the case of Duncan Tea Estate — apparently to hoodwink the tea workers —which ended in a flop show.”
BJP MlA Samik Bhattacharya said “this is nothing but an election gimmick in order to score some cheap electoral mileage by
hoodwinking the people. But they understand it all and give the Trinamool Congress a befitting reply.
Incidentally the Chief Minister on Friday claimed that her performance in the past five years had become a “matter of research” as “no one in the past has done so much work in so little a time.”
She told a meeting how “I have worked relentlessly for the development of the State. I rushed to the districts with my entire team of officials and Ministers, announced the projects and inaugurated them in my next visit though I got almost nothing from the Central Government
which took away all our earning from taxes so that the debt taken by the earlier left Government could be realised.”