Anyone having illegal building will be served notices, we have to demolish them: Agnimitra Paul

Bengal’s Minister for Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Department Agnimitra Paul said that the newly-formed Bharatiya Janata Party government has laid out a roadmap to address civic and infrastructural issues in the state.

Speaking with UNI, Paul said she has primarily listed out five issues that were plaguing the urban local bodies across the state.

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Paul, 53, who pursued an undergraduate degree in Science from Banwarilal Bhalotia College in Asansol under Burdwan University, spoke at length about the roadmap that has been prepared by her department and said that “things have already been set in motion.”

Turning to the state capital, Kolkata, first, Paul said that she was against the level of “encroachment of water bodies everywhere.”

“It is incredible how the past government, in its 15 years of misrule, had turned a blind eye to rampant filling up of waterborne bodies across the state. These people have not even spared the East Kolkata Wetlands. It is criminal that they allowed this to happen,” Paul said.

According to her, a survey is being carried out to identify such illegal encroachment of wetlands and subsequent construction on them.

The East Kolkata Wetlands is a protected Ramsar site where permanent constructions are not allowed.

Next, Paul said that her department is looking to set up sewage and solid waste recycling units using the private-public partnerships (PPP) model. “Solid waste and sewage management in the state is in a dismal state. The issue is not only about collecting and dumping. We have to find a way to recycle the waste generated in the state,” Paul said, before adding that concrete waste generated from construction sites can be used to make paver blocks.

Waste plastic can also be added to the asphalt mix used to make roads across the state. “These recycling units will turn out to be revenue generators for the state as well. Biogas generated from waste can prove to be a game-changer for the state,” Paul said.

The state minister also spoke at length about the fact that people, in the absence of a proper water supply, often have to rely on “illegal pumps and other forms of water supply for their day-to-day activities.”

“We are earnestly looking into this issue. We want to ensure that every house in Bengal gets a proper piped water supply,” Paul said.

Coming to sanitation, Paul said that building proper toilets for women and improving sanitation facilities in schools featured in her list of “priorities”.

“Bengal and its state capital Kolkata must improve its performance in national cleanliness rankings and aspire to match the standards achieved by much smaller cities such as Bhopal and Lucknow,” she said.

She also rejected allegations levelled by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that the BJP-led administration was targeting political opponents through bureaucratic action and bulldozers.

Soon after forming the government in Bengal, multiple demolition and eviction drives were carried out in Kolkata as well as other parts of the state. At least 17 notices have been issued to Trinamool Congress’s Diamond Harbout MP and the party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who is the nephew of former chief minister Mamata Banerjee, over alleged irregularities and illegal constructions at properties linked to him.

“Anyone who has an illegal building will be served notices. These are being sent so that they can rectify them and show the relevant documents to the administration. In case they absolutely cannot do so, then we will have to demolish the buildings as they pose a risk to others living in the localities,” Paul said.

The minister also announced that her department was developing a geotagging-based mobile application that would allow residents to upload photographs of garbage dumps or waterlogged areas, enabling civic authorities to initiate time-bound responses and automatically escalate unresolved complaints to senior officials.

“Once a resident uploads a photograph, the complaint will be raised. The civic team responding to the complaint has to post another photograph of the matter being resolved and upload it into the system before the complaint can be closed. This will create an action-based feedback system that can be monitored around the clock,” Paul said.

Addressing questions about the Annapurna Bhandar scheme, where women are going to receive a monthly sum of ₹3,000, Paul said beneficiaries currently receiving assistance under the Lakshmir Bhandar programme would continue to receive support under the revised framework, except in cases where names had been removed after scrutiny due to duplication, death, or absentee voter status.

“Only those who have been excluded from the SIR have been deemed ineligible. Applicants undergoing review under the CAA process or through tribunals would remain eligible for this scheme,” Paul said.

She further indicated that the government was yet to take a final decision on whether income tax payers would be excluded from the scheme, though she suggested that financially secure individuals should voluntarily refrain from availing benefits so that limited state resources could be redirected towards economically vulnerable women who had previously remained outside the ambit of welfare support, adding that budgetary planning was currently underway before the inclusion of fresh applicants.