Mamata Banerjee says West Bengal govt providing food security to almost 90 percent of state under Khadya Sathi scheme

Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday remembered the martyrs of the 1959 ‘Khadya Andolan’ and said her government was providing food security to almost 90 percent of the state’s population through the ‘Khadya Sathi’ scheme.

Banerjee wrote on her Twitter handle:

Remembering the martyrs of 1959 Khadya Andolan. In Bangla, we provide food security to 90% (8.59 crore) of the State's people, through the Khadya Sathi scheme pic.twitter.com/gaQNVXEEgV

— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) August 31, 2018

West Bengal witnessed a mass movement in late 1958 by the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI) and other left groups, protesting against the food crisis. The movement for food, the Khadya Andolon, reached its peak in August 1959. On this day the same year, several demonstrators, including farmers and women, were killed in police firing during a protest rally on the issue.

Banerjee said that special assistance was also being given to the people of once ‘Maoist’-hit Jangalmahal, hill areas, cyclone ‘Aila’ affected regions, and Singur in Hooghly district.

At Singur, agricultural land was forcibly acquired from unwilling farmers by the previous left-front government in 2006 and offered it to the Tata group to build a car plant. The entire land was, however, returned to the present government for their distribution among farmers by the Supreme Court in 2016.

“We also provide rice and wheat through PDS to the families of tea garden workers and to the Toto tribe in north Bengal,” she said.