A day after a massive fire completely destroyed Ghuni Basti, a slum in New Town’s Eco Park, near Kolkata in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday ordered a probe.
The chief minister’s order came amid the Opposition BJP’s charge that the fire was intentionally started by the ruling TMC “to shield infiltrators”.
According to the local administration, 300 families were affected in the fire as over a hundred shanties were gutted. They lost all their belongings, including documents. There were no reports of any casualties.
Following the incident, Banerjee called Fire Minister Sujit Bose to enquire about the situation and ordered a comprehensive probe into the causes and impact of the fire.
“The chief minister has asked for a thorough investigation.. She had called me. Our priority is to provide relief to the affected families,” said state Fire Safety Minister Sujit Bose, adding that those affected have been moved to a relief camp.
On Thursday morning, senior officials inspected the area, located in the densely populated settlement under Rajarhat’s Jyangra-Hatiara 2 gram panchayat, and spoke with affected residents. “We are trying to understand the situation from the ground. The administration will stand by the people in every possible way,” an official said.
The district administration also assured the affected residents that all possible support will be provided.
“We will expedite the replacement of lost documents and provide relief to all affected families as quickly as possible,” the official said.
A forensic team will examine the site, said sources
The fire began on Wednesday evening and quickly spread over the entire slum, quickly gutting shanties made of inflammable bamboo and tarpaulin sheets.
Explosions from gas cylinders in nearby huts further intensified the blaze, eyewitnesses said. Twenty fire tenders were pressed into service.
Ever since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls began last month, the Ghuni slum in New Town made headlines with claims that a majority of its inhabitants were illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators. People claimed that the slum was nearly emptied as a majority of the residents had returned to Bangladesh.
BJP leader and West Bengal co-in-charge Amit Malviya claimed that data from the ASD (Absent, Shifted, Dead) list of six booths under Ghuni village raised serious questions about the blaze that broke out on Wednesday evening.
Malviya alleged that it was an “open secret” that people from Bangladesh had settled in the area, that many residents had allegedly locked their homes and left, and that despite the scale of the blaze, fire tenders were not deployed with urgency.
“After the draft voter roll was published, thousands of names were struck off from this area. To cover up these glaring omissions and facilitate their re-inclusion in the voter list, it is widely believed that the TMC orchestrated this fire. The objective appears to be to claim later that residents lost their documents (Aadhaar, ration cards, and voter ID cards) in the blaze, paving the way for fresh documents to be issued, enabling them to falsely establish citizenship credentials. This is not just an administrative failure; it is deliberate manipulation. Mamata Banerjee is playing with fire. This time, quite literally,” Malviya said.
The TMC hit back, calling the allegations “absolutely outrageous” and anti-Bengal.
“The BJP has always played politics with the issue of Bangladeshis. Is it possible that they hurriedly burnt the slum themselves to shift the blame onto TMC? Amit Malviya claims there are 15 million (1.5 crore) Rohingyas, yet there is no reflection of that in the SIR draft list. Why is the BJP terrifying the voters of West Bengal with such lies? They are crafting random narratives every day,” TMC state Vice-President Joyprakash Majumdar said.
“Instead of showing solidarity with those affected by the fire, the BJP is expressing sadistic pleasure and giving it a political twist, maligning Bengal, defaming the TMC. It is his figment of imagination when he says that these houses were actually being occupied by infiltrators, Bangladeshis, and Rohingyas. This is absolutely outrageous,” he added.