Mamata,who commissions and slams commissions

In Mamata Banerjees view,setting up commissions is a waste of public money as these are run by people who are out to make money,build houses and buy cars.

In Mamata Banerjees view,setting up commissions is a waste of public money as these are run by people who are out to make money,build houses and buy cars. So many commissions have been set up with so little results when so much money is being spent on them,the West Bengal chief minister said on the 75th anniversary of the Assembly.

She should know. In the space of less than 10 months after she assumed power,her government set up 10 commissions of inquiry. The only one to complete its inquiry ran up a bill of Rs 72 lakh and came up with conclusions the police had already made.

Mamatas recent outburst came after former judge Ashok Kumar Ganguly,head of the state human rights commission,observed that the police had wrongfully detained a Jadavpur University professor for circulating cartoons of Mamata,and that the state ought to compensate two persons who had mailed those cartoons around.

When she hit back at the statutory body,Mamata did not specify what kinds of commissions she finds pointless. Her governments 10 commissions between June 2011 and March 2012 have all been judicial,set up for various inquiries.

The one that completed its probe was the Justice D P Sengupta Commission. It ruled that CPM MLA Mostafa Bin Quasem,who died on May 29,2011,had committed suicide,exactly what the police had concluded from the recovery of two suicide notes a year ago.

Of the other nine commissions,five are at work while the other four are yet to start because there is apparently not enough office space. A commission is given six months but the trend,say law department officials,is one or more extensions.

In a state struggling with finances,government sources say a commission runs bills of Rs 33-36 lakh every six months. The government pays a commissions head,who is a retired judge,the difference between his last salary and current pension. The bill includes DA,HRA and Rs 40,000 as vehicle expenditure.

Story continues below this ad

We spend at least 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh per month on the chairman of a commission, a senior home department official said. The judge sometimes uses the services of retired court record writer as a personal assistant,and the government needs to pay them too.

Besides the retired judge,a judicial commission is supposed to comprise an official each of the ranks of secretary,deputy secretary and undersecretary,besides a supervising official and two typists. Because of the huge expenses involved,the Bengal finance department has done away with the typists and the deputy secretarys equivalent.