With Assembly elections scheduled for next year, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her government are making all efforts to woo the electorate. The Trinamool Congress Government has promised to distribute test papers free of cost to students appearing for the school final exams (Madhyamik Pariksha of the State Board) in February 2016. According to an estimate, over 11 lakh students will be sitting for the exams this year.
“Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee herself decided that the Madhaymik test papers should be available free to each and every student. The students will be able to collect the test papers for free from their schools,” Education Minister Partha Chatterjee said.
As per estimates provided by the government, the cost of printing one test paper is Rs 35 and the government will have to spend about Rs 4 crore on printing.
Mr Chatterjee stated that the State government was planning to offer Higher Secondary test papers for free to students appearing in 2016. About six lakh students appear in the HS examination held by the State Board.
The state government has started distributing bicycles to the students for free. According to the Chief Minister, there are plans to distribute over 40 lakh bicycles of which half will be distributed by the middle of 2016.
The Opposition parties, particularly the Communist party of India (Marxist), said that the government’s decision was to divert attention from real issues like agrarian crisis and distress in labour-intensive sectors like tea and jute.
“The Trinamool government thinks that by distributing freebies like cycles and test papers they can win over the people. On one hand they claim shortage of funds and on the other spend a lot of money on organising festivals and dolling out freebies,” said Mohd Salim, the CPI(M) MP and member of Polit Bureau.
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