Letters: Off the mark

The Newsmaker on Amit Mitra “Mamata’s Mitra pulls his socks up for polls” (March 18) contains two inaccuracies:

(i) If Amit Mitra believes that 99 per cent of land in the state is cultivated, he is grossly off the mark. Total cultivable land was 64.7 per cent (56.07 lakh hectares) of the total geographical area of the state in 2008-09 and it will not be radically different now. The data being sourced from Economic Review of the government of West Bengal 2009-10 may appear questionable to your newsmaker in which case his source may be published in your paper.

(ii) Contrary to what is stated in the interview, the West Bengal Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act 2010 was legislated vide notification No.1166-L. dated July 30, 2010 of the law department of the state government. The legislation was published in national dailies too. The enactment was followed by an ordinance dated February 7, 2011 to amend Sections 2 and 4 of the Act.

Rajat Dasgupta, Kolkata

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