Paying tribute to the “martyrs” of the 1959 Food Movement, including Nurul Islam, who was the face of the Left movement, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee hit out at the CPI(M) as well as the BJP, accusing them of starving the people of the state.

Quoting Bharatchandra Ray’s poem, the TMC supremo claimed that “today’s Bengal can say its children are bathed in milk and rice” and that hunger has been “eradicated” from the state.

Blaming the erstwhile Left Front government for the “starvation deaths” in the state during its rule, Mamata Banerjee cited the 2004 Amlasole incident in which five tribals died reportedly starvation in Belphari block of Paschim Medinipur district. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was then the chief minister of the state.

Mamata Banerjee also accused the Opposition BJP of trying to “finish off the people of Bengal by starving them” by centralising funds in Delhi.

“The right to food is an eternal right of humanity. I feel bad that our adversaries do not respect this right. The Leftists once pretended to support the food movement, but while in government, they starved people to death. We have not forgotten incidents like Amlasole,” she wrote on X.

“And the BJP kills with language as well as with hunger. They want to trap all the money in Delhi and finish off the people of Bengal by starving them,” the chief minister added.

In a quick rebuttal, CPI(M) leader Sujan Chakraborty accused the chief minister of “never speaking the truth”.

“The food movement didn’t happen only in Bengal. The Left parties had formed the Price Increase and Famine Resistance Committee to protest the food crisis. Food prices had shot up during the 1950s. Several people were killed in Kolkata as police fired on a demonstration against rising food prices. About 80 people lost their lives on August 31. Today, she is saying this to malign that. In fact, Amlasole is also a wrong proposition, and time and again it has been proved. The Left never starved people to death,” the CPI(M) leader said.

“She talks about the ‘Doorstep Ration’ scheme. Why does this government have to bank on the Duare ration scheme? It only shows that the public distribution system in the TMC rule has failed,” the CPI(M) leader added.

The TMC supremo, however, claimed that her government has made the right to food a reality in West Bengal and has set a model for the entire country.

Listing several projects aimed at providing food to the state’s population, the chief minister claimed that 8.3 crore people receive completely free rations under the Khadyasathi scheme, for which the government has allocated Rs 1.05 lakh crore.

She said that on average, 7.4 crore people are receiving foodgrain at their homes each month through the Duare Ration (Doorstep Ration) project, which has an expenditure of Rs 1,500 crore.

“Additionally, under the Ma Project, impoverished individuals are provided with lunch for only Rs 5,” she said, adding that her government procured a record 56.36 lakh metric tonnes of paddy this year for the Khadyasathi project, “directly benefiting 17 lakh small and marginal farmers”.