For years, Biswa Bangla had expanded far beyond a state handicraft label into a powerful political identity spanning airports, festivals, real estate branding, and beyond.
For years, Biswa Bangla had expanded far beyond a state handicraft label into a powerful political identity spanning airports, festivals, real estate branding, and beyond.
The new Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in West Bengal is learnt to have initiated an internal assessment of two of the most politically significant structures expanded during Mamata Banerjee’s rule. These include the Biswa Bangla Marketing Corporation and the sprawling civic volunteer police system. Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari in meetings with senior officers has stated that his government will probe the ‘institutional corruption’ and ‘illegal or without tenders procurement’. The review will be initiated early next month, after the government forms its full cabinet and the portfolios are distributed, a senior source told News18.
According to the senior administrative sources, departments have been informally asked to compile reports on financial models, recruitment structures, legal status and operational jurisdictions linked to these entities.
“Creation of Biswa Banga, holding of Biswa Banga Sammelan, disinvestment of Metro Diary and without tenders’ procurement of cycles – these are some of the decisions that carry serious administrative and financial anomalies. The government will review, and if needed, initiate a probe in all these matters," said a senior officer.
Significantly, Suvendu Adhikari, while in the position of the Leader of the Opposition (LoP) raised questions over the formation of Biswa Bangla and then allegedly controversial functioning of the corporation. Bengal’s BJP unit protested against the instance of Abhishek Banerjee applying for the trademark for Biswa Bangla logo in 2013. The company was incorporated and registered in 2014. Banerjee, however, withdrew his application in 2018. News18 has accessed all the relevant documents.
While no formal notification has yet been issued as of now, the exercise is being viewed within the bureaucracy as the beginning of a deeper structural review of systems that evolved parallel to conventional government mechanisms over the last decade and a half.
The first symbolic shift has already become visible. The familiar blue-and-white Biswa Bangla branding, once inseparable from the Mamata Banerjee administration, is gradually disappearing from official communication spaces.
For years, Biswa Bangla had expanded far beyond a state handicraft label into a powerful political-governmental identity spanning airports, festivals, real estate branding, hospitality and global investor events.
Officials in the new dispensation privately admit that the concern is not cultural branding itself, but the degree to which a state-backed platform became centralised around one political ecosystem. Questions are likely to be examined over land use, branding expenditures, vendor selection, marketing contracts and the overlap between government promotion and political projection. “The idea is to examine institutional boundaries," said a senior official familiar with the discussions.
The Parallel Administration Question
The more sensitive review, however, concerns Bengal’s enormous civic volunteer network. Initially introduced as a support mechanism for police and public services, the civic force expanded dramatically over the years into traffic management, hospital security, crowd control and local intelligence gathering.
Within administrative circles, concerns had long existed over the absence of a clear service structure, training standards and recruitment transparency.
Senior BJP leaders, while in Opposition, repeatedly alleged that the network had evolved into a politically dependent patronage structure at the grassroots level. Sources now indicate that the government may examine district-wise recruitment patterns, verification systems and deployment practices before deciding whether restructuring is required.
Senior officers said that the move is being positioned internally as an administrative and regulatory exercise rather than a political one. But within Bengal’s bureaucracy, there is already recognition that the review goes beyond files and audits. It signals an attempt by the new regime to dismantle what many officers describe as the ‘parallel architecture’ of governance built during the Trinamool era.