KOLKATA: With only months to go for the assembly polls, it's raining jobs in Mamata's Bengal. The cash-strapped state government on Tuesday stretched itself to recruit 1.9 lakh people, taking on a burden that will strain its frayed coffers even further.

After a cabinet meeting at Nabanna, the government announced it would recruit 70,000 teachers and 60,000 staff each in Group C and D categories. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee rounded off the figure to 2 lakh, without specifying anything about the additional 10,000, keeping lakhs of unemployed youths clinging to hope. A government order on this is yet to be issued.

There is more to come from the CM's bounty — the government aims to create a whopping 17 lakh jobs in the MSME sector by next fiscal.

The state hopes to plug the manpower drain. But according to rough estimates, the 1.9 lakh recruits will add a burden of another Rs 4,000 crore to the state's non-plan expenditure this year, when the state is racing against time to meet the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) stipulations. Also, it comes at a time when the state has borrowed Rs 1500 crore from the market merely to make ends meet and it is over and above the Rs 1,000 crore state borrowings in April 2015.

Bengal already tops the list of borrowers, with Rs 21,900 crore borrowings during 2014-15, prompting state finance minister Amit Mitra to admit in the assembly that the state is in a debt trap though he blamed the mess left behind by the Left Front government.

A peek on expenditures reveals the crunch. While state government employees are yet to get pending installments of dearness allowance, employees in state undertakings, such as Calcutta State Transport Corporation (CSTC), are being paid salaries in instalments.

23 lakh job target by next fiscal

For West Bengal, there is little room at the moment to jack up its own generation. It can hardly afford the new jobs.

However, the fund crisis was brushed under the carpet as the government doubled salaries of civic volunteers from Rs 2,800 a month to Rs 5,500. It has engaged 1.3 lakh civic volunteers. "Civic volunteers will be entitled to 14 days of leave every year. About 10% of eligible civil volunteers will be inducted as home guards," the CM said. Only a day ago, the panchayat department has hiked the pay of the 100-day work supervisors. There are some 10,000 of them and the raise will cost the state another Rs 60 crore a year.

The CM announced that the state has set a target of 23 lakh jobs by the next fiscal in various sectors, specially the micro and small-scale industries.