The protesters at the ICDS office. Picture by Anirban Choudhury

Hamiltongunj (Alipurduar), Aug. 21: Over a hundred Congress supporters today locked up the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) office here to protest against alleged discrepancies in the recruitment of workers under the Central scheme.

The agitation was triggered by the appointment of workers in 24 new ICDS centres across four closed gardens — Bharnobari, Kalchini, Raimatang and Chinchula — situated in Kalchini block. According to Congress leaders of the area, the appointments were made without informing the selection committee.

The committee comprised members of the Kalchini panchayat samiti, which is controlled by the Congress.

Around nine this morning the protesters laid siege to the office, 33km from Alipurduar town, and the demonstration went on for three hours. They also threatened to shut down the block development office and the panchayat samiti office if the issue is not resolved within 72 hours.

“The last meeting we had on the issue was on August 10. It was attended by the Kalchini BDO and the child development project officer, Ratna Dutta. There we had discussed the modalities of the selection process and the number of workers to be recruited,” said Congress leader Pravat Mukherjee, who was also present at the meeting. “However, later we found that the new appointment letters had been issued on July 24. So she had finalised the list on her own before the meeting with us.”

Mukherjee also alleged that some of the new workers do not belong to closed gardens.

An ICDS worker runs a centre along with a helper and is paid Rs 1,400 per month from the project office. The workers provide pre-primary and primary education to children, give health supplements to pregnant mothers and cook food for the children.

“Though it is not clear what mistake I committed, I will try to resolve the issue at the earliest,” said Dutta.