| The Telegraph | ||
| MEGHDEEP BHATTACHARYYA | ||
Siliguri, Aug. 5: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee this evening inaugurated the police commissionerate for Siliguri, a longstanding demand of the people of the town. She kept to her earlier refrain that the hills and plains should work together and asked the 3,000 Trinamul supporters gathered there if they were happy that the police hub had become a reality. “Aapnara khushi tho (are you happy)?” she asked the crowd and turned her mike towards them. They yelled a loud “yes”. The new commissionerate will be headed by Anand Kumar, the current DIG of Darjeeling. Mamata also inaugurated an office of the railway recruitment board and promised a host of projects for the development of the region. She also promised that she would keep coming back. “This is just the beginning. I will keep coming back, bringing more and more for you,” she said. “In a little over a year, despite the financial bankruptcy of this government, we’ve set specific targets and we are doing everything we can to achieve them,” Mamata told the crowd at the Siliguri police lines at Mallaguri. “From 600 police personnel, you will have over 2,200 personnel at your service now. This commissionerate will greatly improve law and order of these areas…. Governments of other states wonder at how we have been able to set up five new commissionerates across the state in such a short span of time. I say when there is a will, there’s a way,” Mamata said. “North Bengal is a focal area of this government. We treat the hills and the plains with equal importance. Without the hills, the plains won’t do well and without the plains the hills can’t survive. We will develop both regions in this area,” she told a gathering of around three thousand — an estimate given by a police source. Union railway minister Mukul Roy, north Bengal development minister Gautam Deb, chief secretary Samar Ghosh, home secretary Basudeb Banerjee and a host of other senior officials attended the event. About the RRB office, she said its office in Siliguri would help people in the area who will no longer have to go to other places to appear for railway examinations. The chief minister said she would come back within a month and a half to inaugurate three new projects, an ESI hospital on a five-acre plot at Siliguri, a 75-acre film city at Kawakhali and an axle factory of the railways at New Jalpaiguri. At a proposed investment of around Rs 400 crore, the axle factory will be the largest public industrial set-up in north Bengal. It was announced by Mamata in her railway budget of 2010. “Our principal target, with regard to development, is job creation and creation of more opportunities. These projects, and many more that we will bring to you, will bring you jobs and overall development…. I had promised 10 lakh jobs across Bengal in five years. In a year’s time I have created six lakh jobs, including three lakh in the private sector,” said Mamata. Mamata said Siliguri will get a human rights court, one of 19 such courts to be set up across the state. |
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