Chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday launched the student credit card scheme and announced her government’s decision to repeat distributing bicycles among Class IX students and cash among Class XII students to buy tablets or smartphones for online studies.
The announcements, many observers said, captured her attempt to please the teens, most of whom will become voters by the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
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Mamata launched the student credit card scheme from Nabanna in the presence of state education minister Bratya Basu and top government officials. “Students up to the age of 40 years can avail an education loan of up to Rs 10 lakh. One has to be at least a Class X student to avail this loan,” she said.
The Mamata Banerjee government has estimated that 1.6 crore beneficiaries will be included in the “Lakshmir Bhandar (Lakshmi’s treasure)” scheme which promises Rs 1,000 to women heads of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe families and Rs 500 to those in general categories a month.
The scheme had been promised by chief minister Mamata Banerjee before recent Assembly elections.
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Top government officials held a meeting recently to work out the modalities of the dole.
“Work to implement the scheme will start on the ground from July 1. The first thing we have to do is to register the beneficiaries of the scheme. It has been assessed that the scheme will have a total of 1.6 crore beneficiaries,” said a senior government official.
Bengal s women voted fully conscious of their gender, socio-political existence: Experts downtoearth.org.in - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from downtoearth.org.in Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It’s a Mamata Banerjee versus people of Bengal fight: Locket Chatterjee
April 09, 2021
Locket Chatterjee×
An actor-turned-politician, Locket Chatterjee has built the BJP’s women’s wing and contributed to the party’s meteoric rise in West Bengal. In an interview to
BusinessLine, Chatterjee, who is now contesting the Assembly polls from Chunchura, talks about how
Jai Shri Ram has become a metaphor for protest against “criminalisation and corruption” of the ruling TMC. Excerpts:
How different is your journey as a MP from Hooghly and the current scenario where you are fighting the Assembly polls? In 2019, when I was named as a candidate for the Hooghly Lok Sabha seat, it was a Trinamool citadel. The Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, had pitched herself as a son-of-the soil and her party was upbeat about making it 3-0 again (Hooghly has three Lok Sabha seats – Hooghly, Arambag and Sreerampur). For us, it was a new fight at that point of time.