In an effort to increase the revenues of the state, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the state transport department will acquire all the truck terminals functioning along the borders.
The Chief Minister alleged that some people were taking money from the truck terminals functioning along the borders. She added that the takeover of all the truck terminals will be completed before February 7.
“I shall not allow this to continue,” the chief minister said at an administrative meeting. “The District Magistrates and the Superintendents of Police should know this. The money from the truck terminals is going to some local people. There are some political parties and some government officers who are involved in the whole process. So we have decided to hand over all the truck terminals functioning along the border to the transport department,” she added.
“There will be nothing private. It should be fully owned and controlled by the state government. We want the revenue to go to the government coffers and not distributed among some individuals,” Banerjee said. She asked Chief Secretary H K Diwedi to explain the whole plan to the DMs and SPs of the concerned districts.
“Recently I had a meeting with the DMs and SPs of the seven bordering districts. It is a fact that the money from these truck terminals is not adding up to the government revenue. There are two truck terminals at Bongaon in North 24 Parganas and there are four in other districts as well. It is true that the local municipalities get some money from these places but the state government gets nothing. The entire money is locally distributed. It is not helping the government,” Diwedi informed the chief minister.
The chief secretary said the Bongaon municipality has already given a NoC (No Objection Certificate) to the state government but it is not written properly. We need to get another NoC from the municipality.
Minister of State for Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Chandrima Bhattacharya said, “It is written in a poor and faulty language. This is not an NoC at all”.
The chief minister then asked Bhattacharyay to arrange for NoCs from the concerned municipalities. “Tell them what to write. If they refuse to give the NoC you know what to do,” she said. Banerjee asked all the concerned departments to complete the whole process within 72 hours and hand over the terminals to the transport department. “There should be an advertisement on the 8th of this month,” the chief minister told state transport minister Firhad Hakim.
“We need a lot of money and it will come from the bordering areas. This will increase the revenue of the state government. There are projects like Lakshmi Bhandar and Students Credit Card where we need money. Where will the money come from? We need to run these projects. We will have to be proactive,” she said.
