Manish Gupta in Cooch Behar. (Main Uddin Chisti)

Cooch Behar, Feb. 12: Power minister Manish Gupta today hauled up officials for the slow implementation of the rural electrification scheme in Cooch Behar and warned at least one engineer that he would be transferred to as far as the Sunderbans since his performance was not up to the mark.

The censure came at a meeting convened to review the progress of the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Electrification Scheme in Gupta’s home district.

Gupta, whose ancestral house is in Mathabhanga, asked officials why no time-frame had been set for the project that was introduced four years ago. He asked each of the dozen or so power officials present at the meeting where their homes were and how long they had been serving in the district.

“I am from Dinhata and I have been posted here for the past three years,” said a senior engineer connected to the rural electrification.

An angry minister then retorted: “So, you are from this district and that is why the rural electrification scheme is lagging behind in your area. I will see that you get transferred to Patharpratima in the Sunderbans.” The Telegraph was present in the room when Gupta asked the district magistrate to “note down” the engineer’s posting.

Senior administrative officials refused comment on the meeting. “It was a review meeting,” said an official. Asked if the district magistrate would send the “note” to Writers’, the official said: “Everything will go to Writers’. The minister does not take notes himself, somebody has to do it. Even the proposals were noted down.”

The minister later refused to say how many villages were yet to be electrified. “I, as a minister, am telling you that Cooch Behar is lagging, that is all,” he said.

This is not the first time that officials are being pulled up for their alleged inefficiency by ministers of the new government. At a meeting in Malda on February 7, irrigation minister Manas Bhunia came down heavily on engineers of his department, dubbing them “inefficient and useless” for “failing to get done even one-tenth of work” sanctioned under the central rural job scheme.

Two months ago, panchayat minister Subrata Mukherjee had pulled up senior officials for failing to provide work to villagers under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

Gupta asked the district magistrate to ensure that the rural electrification scheme was speeded up. “Please select specific areas and set a time-frame to finish the project,” he told district magistrate Mohan Gandhi.

Sources in the power department said the rural electrification scheme was being implemented in Bengal from 2008. They added that Mamata Banerjee had told Gupta during her administrative meeting in Nadia last week that the central scheme should be strictly monitored.

Kalyani Poddar, the chairperson of the Cooch Behar district primary school council, requested Gupta to look into the electrification of schools in far-flung rural areas.

“The minister has asked us to prepare a list of such schools and submit it to the district magistrate as soon as possible,” said Poddar.