Rejinagar/Kolkata: CM Suvendu Adhikari on Thursday promised to turn Rejinagar into a “model assembly constituency”, pledging a 200-bed hospital, a college, a bridge, new industries and five milk collection centres over the next one-and-a-half years. He also said he would open a public service centre in the name of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, similar to initiatives he said he had undertaken in Bhowanipore and Nandigram.“My Hindu brothers will say ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and my minority brothers will say ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’,” Adhikari said.He said he had spent around two hours travelling through Rejinagar and interacting with residents as part of his public outreach. He also visited the memorial of Mir Madan, commander of the Nawab of Bengal’s forces at the Battle of Plassey, and the home of six-year-old Jasmina Khatun, who died on Tuesday after suffering critical injuries while trying to collect lozenges thrown from an election campaign vehicle during a Democratic Trinamool Congress roadshow. Adhikari promised assistance to the girl’s family after the election.“From village after village, minorities who had not voted for the BJP till now are standing in queues, shaking hands with the CM and saying that they will not waste their votes,” Adhikari said.Referring to an incident at the railway ground in Shaktipur in 2019, Adhikari alleged TMC workers and a section of the administration had removed microphones and loudspeakers to prevent BJP from holding a meeting. He said those who had opposed him in the past were now welcoming him. “I have not forgotten. Everything will be accounted for,” he said.“Those who show arrogance, insolence and pride, and those who wish for people’s death, their downfall is inevitable; no one will be able to stop it,” he said, criticising Humayun Kabir over his remarks wishing death upon the Bengal CM, citing incidents involving Ajit Pawar, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.Adhikari also made a series of promises on industrialisation, employment and financial assistance. He said 40,000 migrant workers would be brought back from outside the state within two years. He promised 125 days of work over the next six months at Rs 300 a day, amounting to Rs 37,500, and an additional Rs 3,000 under the PM-Kisan Yojana.He said industrial activity would begin taking shape in Rejinagar within the next one-and-a-half years, with the aim of creating unskilled jobs for migrant workers who had moved to states such as Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.“Within the next one-and-a-half years, you will see smoke rising from factories in the Rejinagar industrial belt. Have faith in this,” Adhikari said, adding that arrangements would be made to provide local employment to migrant workers returning from other states.
