After the senitisation of many areas in Lalgarh, the state government has finally drawn up a plan to enhance the relief and development work in the Lalgarh area. Despite the blast near the BDO office on Thursday, the secretaries of various departments — part of chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s task force — initiated different projects to provide relief and bring back normalcy in Lalgarh and surrounding areas.

Many initiatives including opening up schools, providing foodgrains, laying drinking water pipelines, distributing livestock to villagers, starting bus service with police escort were taken on Thursday. “Our primary aim is to provide relief and drinking water to villagers, opening up schools and running transport system,” said Milk Commissioner Barun Roy, who is stationed at Lalgarh.

The secretaries, stationed in Lalgarh, Pirakata and Ramgarh visited some gram panchayat offices and spoke to village leaders.

“Many people could not get foodgrains because they do not have ration cards and other government documents. We have ordered that even a written document from the panchayat will be sufficient for obtaining the relief. We have asked the ration department to provide new ration cards to villagers within three days,” added Roy.

The administration also conducted a raid in Lalgarh town and seized a number of ration cards from a dealer, Tuhinsubhro Tiwari. Dealers in the area allegedly keep the ration cards of villagers with them and deny them rations.

The team of secretaries also asked the state transport department to run special bus service from Midnapore town to Lalgarh and six buses have been pressed into service from Thursday. From Friday, private bus operators and state transport buses will also run between Lalgarh and Goaltore, Dherua, Midnapore to Dherua and other routes. “We have asked the police to provide escorts to the buses when they pass through the Maoist-hit areas,” Barun Roy added.

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