PTI
Kolkata
A stove, a pot of milk and a pavement in the city have become unlikely props in a larger political drama, after a pavement-dwelling family at the centre of a row involving a rebuke by a state minister, met Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari at his Janata
Durbar on Tuesday.
Days after minister Agnimitra Paul reprimanded Sita Devi for heating milk for her child on a Park Street pavement, the elderly woman appeared before the CM at his public grievance redressal session and received an assurance that the government would arrange alternative accommodation for the family.
Adhikari subsequently said the Kolkata Municipal Corporation would arrange the shelter, while stressing that roads and pavements could not be treated as homes.
“For 15 years, the Mamata Banerjee government did not provide her with a house. Now, they are sending people to her and paying them to criticise the BJP. But she has said that she has faith in the present BJP government. I assured her that arrangements would be made for her accommodation,”
the CM said.
Adhikari also accused the erstwhile TMC and Left Front governments, which had ruled the state for about 50 years, of doing precious little for people like her, forcing them to continue living on a pavement.
“I am under the impression after talking to her, that none of these parties (Left or TMC) offered her rehabilitation to shift from the pavement. I told her we are arranging for an alternative space where she can shift with her family
and child,” he said.
The meeting was striking not merely because of the political personalities involved, but because of the image it presented: a toddler with a feeding bottle accompanying a woman whose daily struggle for shelter had, almost overnight, become a test case for how Bengal’s new government intends to balance an increasingly visible campaign against encroachment with the realities of urban poverty.
Tuesday’s development owed its roots to a viral video of Urban Development and Municipal Affairs Minister Agnimitra Paul, in which she was seen reprimanding the woman heating milk for her child on a pavement using kerosene stove in Park Street area of central Kolkata during a routine inspection of the area.
While the minister instructed her to put out the stove and clear the pavement, the latter responded by asking why anyone would willingly choose the pavement if they had a home, giving the face-off a stark human dimension.
The dispute might otherwise have remained another episode in Kolkata’s long-running struggle over footpath encroachment. Instead, the sight of an impoverished woman apparently being stopped while preparing milk for a child struck a nerve.
The incident evoked strong responses on social media as well as from the political opposition, with a section of netizens and activists questioning how a minister could deprive a hungry infant of its milk.
Former chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday seized on that discomfort. Condemning the episode, Banerjee offered to arrange shelter for the family through one of her party workers, along with food and responsibility for the child’s education, if the family agreed.
Her intervention transformed a civic enforcement controversy into a direct political confrontation with the BJP-led government.
