June 24: The government today shifted the relief secretary amid allegations of shoddy distribution of relief and governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi called two ministers for a briefing.

Atanu Purakayastha will be replaced by environment secretary M.L. Meena, Writers’ Buildings sources said.

The chief minister’s office had apparently received many complaints about poor distribution and poor quality of relief.

An official in the chief minister’s office said Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was “unhappy with Purakayastha’s flood management”.

Many officials could not recall another instance of a relief secretary being shifted in the wake of a calamity.

Relief minister Mortaza Hossain and disaster management minister Srikumar Mukherjee will go to Raj Bhavan on Thursday to tell Gandhi the measures the government has taken to ensure proper distribution of relief.

Trinamul Congress and BJP leaders had complained to Gandhi about “shoddy and inadequate relief”.

Complaints kept pouring from the flooded areas.

Surjya Ghorai, 35, and his wife Bijoya, 28, who took shelter along the Digha-Mecheda rail tracks in East Midnapore with their three children on Thursday, said they had not received any aid.

Kalipada Das, 72, of Sabong, West Midnapore, is surviving on wet rice he managed to salvage after his house collapsed last Wednesday.

Over 350 passengers returning to Calcutta from Puri, where they had got stranded because of the floods, were stuck again as 500 flood-hit people surrounded the government buses for two hours and protested on National Highway 6 in West Midnapore.

They turned their ire on water resources minister Nandagopal Bhattacharya and the disaster management minister when they were on the way to some flood-hit areas.

Union minister and state Congress chief Priya Ranjan Das Munshi was greeted by an angry mob in Sabong.