'Congress flouts protocol'

Statesman News Service

MALDA, Feb. 21. — Mr Sailen Sarkar, state food processing and horticulture minister alleged today that the Congress has violated protocol stipulated by the government. The criticism came after the Congress leaders directly handed over compensation granted by the Centre to relatives and kin of the 11 victims in the Delhi mall collapse case, without adhering to guidelines. Reportedly, the Congress had earlier claimed that government officials would carry out distribution of the compensation. But it was later found that the Congress members themselves distributed the money sent from the Centre for the victims’ families at Ratua to gain political mileage. Malda district magistrate said that he did not have any information about the compensation issue. At a Press conference today, Mr Sarkar said Union minister Mr Priya Ranjan Das Munshi had collected Rs 38.34 lakh from Workmen’s Compensation Fund and Rs 11 lakh from the Delhi state government to compensate relatives of those who died in the Delhi mall-collapse case. Mr Sarkar added that the compensation money should not have been distributed by flouting the government’s guidelines. This way, the CPI-M minister added, it would be difficult to identify the victim’s kin later, without proper government records. It may be recalled that the same politics had ensued when the 11 bodies of Malda labourers had arrived by train. Then, the CPI-M CPI-M-backed trade unions had tried to gain full political mileage out of the incident, in order to earn credit from the Centre.