With the panchayat elections in West Bengal drawing near, the ruling Trinamool Congress is all set to scale up its public outreach programmes in the state in an attempt to garner support and push the Opposition parties, particularly the BJP, on the back foot. From deciding to take her 'Duare Sarkar' (government at the doorsteps) programme to the booth level in early April to holding a mega rally and dharna against the central government's alleged bias against the state in March-end, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and party supremo wants to leave no stone unturned to maximise the party's reach to party workers as well as people at the grassroots level. The rural polls are scheuled to be held in the state in May. Also, she has decided to continue with the Didir Doot (Mamata's messenger) programme. Besides, TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee will be holding a series of public rallies in various districts of the state as part of the mega outreach plan. On March 29, the ruling party's youth and student wings (Trinamool Youth Congress and Trinamool Chhatra Parishad) have called a rally at Shahid Minar in Kolkata to protest against the Narendra Modi-led Central government's alleged “misuse” of agencies and “anti-people” policies depriving Bengal of its dues. The rally will be addressed by Abhishek Banerjee. It has been decided that Abhishek's tour of districts will start from Alipurduar on April 8. He will be in Bankura on April 12, East Burdwan on 17 North Dinajpur on April 20 and Arambagh on 29, it is learnt. This at a time when central probe agencies are making arrests with claims of corruption by those belonging to the ruling party in the alleged school recruitment and cow smuggling scams. The 'Duare Sarkar' programme that started in 2020 had benefited the ruling party ahead of 2021 Assembly elections. As part of the programme, camps were held at the panchayat level where people unable to avail of benefits of government schemes could share their grievances and get the work done. A senior state government official said, "Since the launch of the programme in 2020, the state government has held more than 3.71 lakh community-level outreach camps. The ‘Duare Sarkar’ has been made part of the state government's administrative calendar from the next year." To benefit more people, the state government has decided that the sixth edition of ‘Duare Sarkar’ and ‘Paray Samadhan’ will be held at booth level, he added. Of late, Chief Minister Banerjee has mounted attacks on the BJP and keep distance from Congress as well. She will stage a dharna for two days asking the Centre to clear all dues of the state. She has claimed that the total dues are more than Rs 1 lakh crore. On the TMC's outreach programme, CPIM leader Sujan Chakraborty said, “People of Bengal now know how neck-deep the ruling party in corruption. This is all drama. People will give a suitable reply to the TMC in the upcoming panchayat election." BJP leader Samik Bhattacharya said, "The TMC is trying to fool people but that will not happen.”
