A committee has been created for New Town purportedly for keeping in touch with people who stay in or come regularly to the township and listening to their problems. The seven-member body, named Welfare Committee for New Town, held its first meeting on May 22 at Hidco Bhavan.

Coordination has been an issue between the two bodies ever since Debashis Sen, who used to head both Hidco and NKDA, retired a year and half ago. Though there used to be executive engineer-level meetings, issues remained especially when it came to lodging of grievances by the public and deciding the onus of executing judicial orders directed at the New Town authorities.

“Lot of people come to New Town daily and the number of residents has also gone up significantly. People are not aware which between the two is in charge of a specific facility or road. This committee is supposed to hear out their problems and forward the issue to the right authority and also do the follow-up till the matter is sorted out. The committee will also inform people about the government facilities available,” said Sabyasachi Dutta, the chairman of Bidhannagar Municipal Corporation who has been named a member of the committee.

Dutta said this committee was on the lines of a “neighbourhood committee” which functioned from 2011 to 2021. “That was for the improvement of the panchayat areas adjoining New Town. It was chaired by Debashis Sen. I used to be there as well as the district magistrate. The MP (Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar) was on the committee but she could never make it to any of the meetings,” he said.

No place for MLA

This time, the MP has not been named in the committee, nor has the current MLA of Rajarhat New Town Tapash Chatterjee. “Onara onno kajey byasto thaken bole onader nam ashe ni,” commented Dutta, who has shifted his residence from DL Block in Salt Lake to New Town. “I shifted last year before Viswakarma Puja to Siddha Galaxia Phase II (in the Raigachhi Battala area of Rajarhat),” he added.

Chatterjee said he had heard of the committee. “No one has discussed it with me. Both the MP and I are on the NKDA board. But no people’s representative is in this new committee. A journalist has been made the chairperson. I asked the joint managing director, the signatory of the order, who has formed the committee. He said he had no idea. I asked the NKDA chairman. Even he could not say. He is not in the committee, his CEO is. Since I am neither in the committee nor has a copy been marked to me, I don’t know what the role of this committee will be,” said the Rajarhat New Town MLA.

Dutta said since two members of the committee were Hidco officers and two were from NKDA, they had official space in New Town as did the deputy commissioner of police (Bidhannagar). “At the first meeting, it was decided that those of us who did not have space to sit in New Town would be given seats in Hidco Bhavan,” he said.

Asked whether he was interested to get a ticket to contest next year’s Assembly election from Rajarhat New Town, Dutta said he would be “delighted to perform any duty” that the party would ask him to take up. “What’s a chairperson’s role other than holding a meeting every month?” he said dismissively of his current position.