The Hindu Business Line : Bengal panel to probe reports of starvation deaths

A team has been sent to Belpahari and Banspahari in West Midnapore district where five people are reported to have died of starvation over the last five months. The villages lie on the Bengal - Jharkhand border.

The deaths have been corroborated by local gram panhayat who said that the dead were all tribals aged between 30 and 67. They used to subsist on selling firewood felled from the forest nearby.

However, this has become difficult in the wake of increased vigilance by forest department officials on the one hand and the police on the other who comb the forests in a routine manner to weed out militants.

The residents of this village have little access to medical facilities even as they fall ill to various ailments, including malnutrition. The nearest hospital is 28 km away as is the office of the block development officer.

Even as he declined to comment on the exact cause of the reported starvation deaths in West Midnapore, Mr Bhattacharjee admitted that the area where these deaths have occurred are very remote and they face various problems.

" Poverty, hunger, inadequate health care facilities, lack of potable water stalk the people of this region," the chief minister said while talking to reporters at the state secretariat.

"The district magistrate and the superintendent of police who were asked to rush to the area have submitted their reports and I am not commenting on the nature of the deaths - death in any form is unfortunate," he remarked.

He said that the Government's action was now directed to improving the lot of the people staying in these areas by increasing facilities for agriculture, irrigation, drinking water and health care and provision for electricity through non-conventional sources.

The State Chief Secretary will soon hold a meeting to address these issues and evolve schemes quickly, he said adding that agricultural activities was likely to be a better income generation activity than collecting firewood.

The separate development council called Paschimanchal Development Council which is responsible for working out schemes for these areas has been given a Rs 15 crore annual corpus by the Planning Commission for developing these areas. This fund will be accessed for the schemes.

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