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For more than two months now, a proposal from the West Bengal government to develop the sites where Ray shot his famous films including Pather Panchali as tourist destinations has been awaiting the comments and approval of Minister of State for Tourism Sultan Ahmed, who is from the Trinamool.
Ray’s masterpiece, Pather Panchali, was partly shot at Boral, which in the 1950s was about 5 km south of Kolkata city. The site has now vanished owing to urbanisation and construction in that area. Many of Ray’s other films were shot in the red soil terrain of Birbhum district and some at a few locations around Santiniketan.
Sources told The Indian Express that it was Ahmed’s party colleague and MP Kabir Suman who had first floated the idea of rediscovering these sites and developing a tourism circuit around them. The CPM-led West Bengal government liked the idea, prepared a detailed project report and approached the Tourism Ministry in New Delhi for grants to develop these areas as part of a mega-tourist destination.
Tourism Minister Kumari Selja supported the proposal and agreed to grant Rs 50 crore that a mega-tourist destination is entitled to get. But since the issue pertained to West Bengal, Selja thought it fit to consult her junior minister Ahmed. That is where the progress on the project hit the roadblock. The file was sent to Ahmed in March but he has yet to find time to attend to it. As a result, the project is still to take off.
Ahmed, however, is not the only Trinamool minister in ignoring popular Bengali sentiment. Party leader and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee herself has stayed away from meetings to decide on the programmes and celebrations planned to commemorate the 150th anniversaries of Tagore and Swami Vivekananda.
The Centre had set up two separate committees for this purpose, both headed by Prime Minister, and Mamata has been included in both of them. In fact, she was also made part of a small core group, called the implementation committee, in which no other representative from West Bengal was included. The committee on Tagore has met twice while the one on Vivekananda has met once. Banerjee, who is mostly away in Kolkata, has attended none of the these despite the fact that one of the meetings was actually rescheduled to suit her convenience.
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this is an imaginery allegation against TMC, CPM always accused TMC for anything even if no rain or too much of rain. and this allegation of ignoring the bengal's icon is one of those allegations. more CPM finds people's hatred towards them more they inv ent such accusation agsinst TMC.