States » EastPosted at: Nov 4 2026 4:41PM


Bengal to recruit 7,200 permanent & 1000 contractual panchayat staff: CM Suvendu Adhikari

Kolkata, Nov 4 (UNI) West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday announced recruitment of around 7,200 permanent employees in the Panchayats and Rural Development Department and said the state would target 22 crore person-days of employment under the Viksit Bharat–G RAM G programme by the end of the financial year.
Addressing a review meeting at Panchayat Bhawan in Salt Lake in the presence of Panchayats and Rural Development Minister Dilip Ghosh, Adhikari said the recruitment would be conducted through the West Bengal Public Service Commission and completed by April 2027.
He said the government would amend the relevant recruitment rules during a special session of the Assembly and would initially recruit around 1,000 contractual employees for a year to address the department's immediate manpower requirements.
“Shortage of manpower should not become an impediment to implementation. Around 7,200 permanent posts have been approved, while about 1,000 contractual employees will be recruited to meet the immediate requirement,” Adhikari said.
The Chief Minister also announced that five acres would be allotted in New Town for construction of a full-fledged Panchayat Bhawan.
He said the proposed Panchayat Bhawan would be located near the proposed sites of the Calcutta High Court and West Bengal Legislative Assembly.
Reviewing implementation of the Viksit Bharat–G RAM G programme, Adhikari said Bengal had generated about 66 lakh person-days so far and was currently generating more than seven lakh person-days of employment every day.
He said the state was targeting 22 crore person-days and expenditure of more than Rs 12,000 crore despite having less than five months of the financial year remaining.
Adhikari said the programme had around 2.63 crore rural job cards and claimed that Aadhaar-based verification had led to the deletion of around 31 lakh “fake” job cards.
More than 10 lakh fresh job cards had subsequently been issued to eligible applicants, he said.
Adhikari said around 90 per cent of beneficiaries had completed e-KYC and claimed that work had commenced in all 3,363 gram panchayats.
He said each gram panchayat was undertaking more than 10 works on average, with around 90,359 development works taken up across the state.
These included projects involving health centres, schools, roads, pond rejuvenation, community toilets, gram panchayat buildings and police stations, he said.
Adhikari said the initiatives were expected to create permanent assets worth around Rs 7,356 crore.
The Chief Minister said the state was linking rural employment with house construction under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin and the West Bengal housing scheme.
He said a verification exercise had reduced an initial list of around 54 lakh houses to approximately 47 lakh and that the state expected to complete their construction over two financial years.
Adhikari alleged that irregularities had affected more than half of around 40 lakh houses previously sanctioned in the state, involving funds of about Rs 30,000 crore.
He said beneficiaries could receive 90-95 days of employment linked to house construction, potentially generating around Rs 27,000 in additional wages per family.
The Chief Minister said the government would also seek an increase in wages for unskilled workers under the programme to bring them closer to prevailing construction-sector rates.
“We want this programme to create durable assets and sustainable livelihoods, rather than merely provide short-term employment,” Adhikari said.
He said the programme would be expanded through convergence with other departments and livelihood schemes, covering agriculture, crab farming in the Sundarbans, shrimp cultivation and measures to address crop losses caused by elephants in Jangalmahal.
Adhikari said the government would also use folk artists, including Baul performers, to conduct awareness campaigns in villages about the programme.
He appealed to migrant workers to return to their villages and participate in rural employment and livelihood programmes, claiming that a family could potentially earn around Rs 3,500 a day through convergence of different schemes.
The Chief Minister also announced increases in food allocations under several welfare programmes.
The ICDS allocation had been raised from Rs 8 to Rs 10 per person, the primary-school Mid-Day Meal allocation from Rs 6.70 to Rs 10, hospital diet allocation from Rs 56 to Ra 110 and the food allocation for jail inmates from Rs 105 to Rs 110, he said.
Adhikari said the government had also approved an increase in the honorarium of Gram Rozgar Sahayaks, with the revised amount expected to take effect from November following formal Cabinet approval.
He said the government had resolved several inter-departmental issues involving the Chief Minister's Office, Finance Department and the Panchayats and Rural Development Department to accelerate implementation.
Adhikari alleged that the rural employment programme had remained non-functional for about four years and that the administration subsequently faced severe manpower and IT-related constraints, including an estimated 80 per cent shortage of staff in the Panchayat system.
He said the government had restored implementation and was accelerating employment generation and creation of durable assets across the state's gram panchayats.
Dilip Ghosh, who accompanied Adhikari at the meeting, said strengthening the Panchayat administration and ensuring adequate manpower were essential to translating the government's rural employment and development programmes into actual benefits for villagers.
The state government aims to make West Bengal one of the country's leading-performing states under the Viksit Bharat–G RAM G programme by December, Adhikari said.
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Tags: #Bengal to recruit 7#200 permanent & 1000 contractual panchayat staff: CM Suvendu Adhikari
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