If Bengal doesn’t reply on complaints, will handover matter to MHA: NCW chief

Kolkata, December 12

The National Commission for Women (NCW) will submit details of over 260 complaints from West Bengal to the Ministry of Home Affairs for further action if the state administration fails to respond to them within 15 days, its chairperson Rekha Sharma said on Saturday.

Sharma was on a two-day visit to the state to inquire into “inaction” on 267 complaints, including two the women’s rights panel has initiated on its own.

The ruling Trinamool Congress, however, claimed that the number of crime against women per one lakh population in Kolkata is much less than that in Ahmedabad in BJP-ruled Gujarat.

The NCW chief said: “The worrisome situation in West Bengal is police don’t reply, and no action has been taken on the complaints. Neither the director general of police nor the chief secretary meets me, and this not the first time. They send their subordinates who are clueless about everything”.

 “In the last eight months, there have been more than 260 complaints, and no report has been sent to us,” Sharma told PTI.

She said that she will write to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and if the commission doesn’t get any response on the complaints within the next 15 days, the matter will be forwarded to the home ministry.

“We met governor during our visit this time. I am not saying the government can control things, but it can at least take action,” she said.

The commission has raised concern about the “rising problem of trafficking of women” from north Bengal and tribal areas of the state.

Senior TMC MP Sougata Ray later said, “The NCW chief is a BJP leader and she spent two hours at BJP head office Raj Bhavan today. So her comments are not surprising.”  The TMC has on several occasions in the past accused Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar of functioning like a BJP leader.

He claimed that cases of crime against women per one lakh population in Delhi and Ahmedabad are 1,457 and 826 respectively, while the figure is 152 in Kolkata.

Ray, however, did not specify the year of data he gave.

He also claimed said the rate of crime against women has come down by 21 per cent since the TMC came to power in the state.

West Bengal’s Women and Child Development Minister Sashi Panja also claimed that women are safer in the state than any other part of the country.

“The state government has taken all steps for the security of the women. The allegations against the state administration are baseless and politically motivated,” she said. — PTI