Calcutta, Aug. 18: Former finance minister Asim Dasgupta today dipped into his knowledge of numbers and came up with several uncomfortable questions for the Mamata Banerjee government over its claims on money spent for relief in 12 flood-affected districts.

Dasgupta led a 12-member Left Front delegation that attended an all-party meeting convened by the chief minister at Nabanna. The meeting was boycotted by the Congress.

The PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and finance minister of Bengal for 24 years had come prepared to embarrass the government at the meeting, where his successor in the department and junior in the erstwhile Presidency College, Amit Mitra, was also present.

Sources present at the meeting said Dasgupta directed all his questions at Mamata, ignoring Mitra, with whom he had got engaged in a war of words before the 2011 Assembly elections over the state of the Bengal economy.

The points raised by Dasgupta:

Clarity on exact expenditure on relief: The former finance minister pointed out that there was an anomaly in the figures provided by the government on its expenditure on relief.

Dasgupta said that during an all-party meeting on August 8, the government had said it had spent Rs 992 crore on relief, but on August 12, the chief minister mentioned in Delhi that Rs 660 crore had been spent.

Detailed break-up of demand from Delhi: Dasgupta said the state government did not give a clear break-up while submitting its demand to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his meeting with Mamata in Delhi on August 12. "The National Disaster Response Funds is a corpus of Rs 8,000 crore but the state demanded Rs 21,000 crore. If a proper break-up of the demand is not given, it is doubtful whether it would be met," he said.

Quantum of relief distribution on the ground: Dasgupta said that as the government did not give figures on what was supplied to which area, it was not clear whether all the affected blocks had received adequate relief materials. "Until the government provides distribution figures at the gram panchayat level or block level, we cannot be satisfied that all the affected people are getting relief properly," he said.

The points raised by Dasgupta did not elicit any specific response from the government. The ruling establishment brushed aside the issues soon after the meeting.

Education minister Partha Chatterjee said Dasgupta had questioned several figures but "did not show interest in the state's initiative to give relief to all the affected people at the appropriate time".

"Had the former finance minister raised questions on relief instead of rolling out figures, it would have been good for the flood-affected people," Chatterjee said.

Senior government officials said the issues highlighted by the former finance minister were pertinent, but as the focus was more on numbers and the veracity of data, the debate was unlikely to touch a chord with common people.