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West Bengal cabinet paves way to build Mahakal temple; BJP targets Mamata govt
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced in October that her government would build the “biggest” temple for Mahakal at Siliguri.
The West Bengal cabinet on Monday cleared several upcoming projects, including a Mahakal (Shiva) temple in Darjeeling’s Siliguri, minister of state for finance (independent charge) Chandrima Bhattacharya said.
“A land measuring 25.15 acres in the Matigara area was earlier given on lease to Laxmi Township and Holdings Ltd. This will be handed to the Siliguri Jalpaiguri Development Authority. Of this land, 17.4 acres, which lie unutilised, will be given to the state tourism department through inter-departmental transfer,” Bhattacharya said.
“A grand Mahakal temple and a state-of-the-art cultural centre will come up on this land. In addition, a convention centre will come up beside Asian Highway-2 on a 10-acre land in the Teesta Township area at Dabgram,” she added.
The minister said the cabinet also decided to allot more land for seven existing industrial parks in various districts and for rural roads.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced in October that her government would build the “biggest” temple for Mahakal at Siliguri. The announcement came months after she inaugurated the new Jagannath temple in the beach town of Digha in East Midnapore district in June this year.
However, the cabinet decision prompted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to accuse Banerjee of trying to recover lost ground in the north Bengal region where the saffron camp was ahead of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in recent elections.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP set a record in West Bengal by bagging 18 of the state’s 42 seats. In north Bengal, it secured seven of the eight seats.
TMC fought back in the 2021 assembly elections and won 213 of the state’s 294 seats. Yet, BJP bagged 30 of the 54 seats in north Bengal although its state-wide tally was limited to only 77.
In the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, BJP suffered huge losses and its tally came down to 12 but it still retained six of the eight north Bengal seats.
BJP state spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said money from the state exchequer cannot be spent to build places of worship.
“A secular government cannot spend money from the exchequer to build temples, mosques or churches. BJP is opposing this. Many Durga puja, Kali puja and Saraswati puja could not be held in Bengal in recent years while Banerjee called Hinduism ‘ganda dharam’ (dirty religion) while addressing Eid congregation at Kolkata’s Red Road,” Sarkar said.
“The Hindus of Bengal have decided to end the TMC regime in 2026. They cannot be fooled any longer,” he added.
Banerjee, while addressing an Eid prayer meeting in Kolkata in March this year, remarked that she does not follow the “ganda dharam of the BJP” and said her comments were directed at the BJP’s alleged use of religion for divisive politics and not Hinduism as a whole.
