Low misappropriation of Amphan relief; will disburse funds to those left out: West Bengal CM

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said 6,000 people were found to have been genuinely deprived of funds distributed by her government for repair of houses devastated by Cyclone Amphan and the state will transfer the money to their accounts within the next three days.

"We had conducted a query and received 40,000 complaints out of which 26,000 were already there in the DM's list. We have found that 6,000 were deprived and to them the funds will be transferred by next three days. There are 6,000 others whose complaints were found to be fake," she said.

She also said very few people were involved in the misappropriation of the funds.

"Our only mistake was that we tried to quickly release the funds to those affected by the cyclone...That's when a few people tried to take advantage of it," Banerjee said.

"Only 0.5 per cent and some tried to do that (misapproproation)," she said. Banerjee, who had earlier held the erstwhile Left Front government in West Bengal responsible for developing a 'mechanism' of stealing funds meant for the public, further said, "That is the reason the erstwhile Left Front never used to distribute reliefs".

The state government has already frozen bank accounts of several people in Nadia district who have received similar amounts of money as part of the compensation package of the state government though their houses were not damaged by the cyclone. The maximum number of complaints regarding irregularities of distribution of the compensation has been received from Purba Medinipore district. Similar complaints were received from North 24 Parganas, South 24 Parganas, Nadia and Howrah districts, secretariat sources said.

Incidentally, around five BDOs have been showcaused by the state government while several Trinamool Congress leaders in these districts have been suspended for their alleged involvement in this connection. The state government has released an amount of Rs 6,800 crore as a part of the compensation for those whose houses were damaged by Amphan.

More than 10 lakh people have received compensation to rebuild their houses but there have been complaints about irregularities from thousands of people in the affected districts. Some people had alleged that relatives and friends of the ruling Trinamool Congress leaders in the districts have received money to rebuild their homes though their houses were not devastated by the cyclone.