Arjuna award winner Swapna Barman has been denied the piece of land that turned into reportedly promised by West Bengal leader and minister Mamata Banerjee during a display on a news channel last year, following her Asian Games gold medal. The 22-year-old athlete has been asking the government to offer her a permanent house close to the Sports Authority of India, located in Kolkata, since September 2018. However, nearly a year has passed since the account that then, and the authorities’ officials have yet to keep their promise. The state authorities offered her a makeshift solution by giving her a small rented condo near the school.
Mail Today has learned that the athlete has been making repeated requests to the city improvement ministry to offer her the promised land. Still, her pleas fell on deaf ears, leaving Swapna, who refused to comment on the problem, annoyed and sad with the situation. When the paper contacted OSD to the minister of city improvement and municipal affairs, Aftab Ahmed, to ask why the athlete had denied the land promised, the officer said their suggestion for the land was rejected via the country’s finance ministry (led by Amit Mitra). There’s nothing the urban development ministry should do.
“There’s nothing our ministry can do to assist Swapna Barman as our notion to supply her a chunk of land changed into rejected by the finance ministry and is out of our reach now,” stated Ahmed, earlier than denying any further questions on the problem. It is likewise worth mentioning that this might be the first time a West Bengal athlete is going through such an ordeal, as a former heptathlete from the kingdom, Soma Biswas, who received silver in the 2002 Asiad Games, changed into provided with a bit of land by the previous authorities. Apart from that, archer Dola Banerjee (2010 CWG gold medallist), paddlers Mouma Das and Polomi Ghatak, and swimmer Bula Chaudhary (all Arjuna awardees) were additionally gifted lands at some stage in the earlier regime.
