‘New Year’s gift’: Mamata Banerjee announces new neighbourhood grievance redressal programme in Bengal

Claiming that the West Bengal government’s ‘Duare Sarkar’ (administration at the doorsteps) programme has been a huge success, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday announced a new initiative ‘Paray Paray Samadhan’, under which local neighbourhood grievances will be redressed. The chief minister said that the programme will be launched on January 2 and will continue till February 15.

“This will not address major infrastructural gaps but will address municipal, local or service gaps through specific mission mode to reach out to the neighbourhood. This will be supplementary of ‘Duare Sarkar’ which has reached out to crores of people. It will be a New Year’s gift,” Banerjee said during an administrative review meeting held here. Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay said, “While ‘Duare Sarkar’ is an individual-oriented programme, neighbourhood problems will be addressed by this scheme. A separate task force comprising a principal secretary and a secretary has been appointed for ‘Paray Paray Samadhan’.” He said like ‘Duare Sarkar’, ‘Paray Paray Samadhan’ will also operate on real-time mode and applicants will be able to track their applications.

“We expect to be able to at least start addressing the issues by February 15,” Bandyopadhyay said. The CMO has received around 10,000 communications regarding problems in the neighbourhoods, he said.

Through ‘Duare Sarkar’, the West Bengal government aims to enable left-out eligible beneficiaries to avail 11 state-run schemes. The programme has started on December 1 and will continue till January 30.