New Delhi: The Trinamool Congress today hit out at the BJP and its supporters for tom-tomming the budgetary allocation this year for railway projects in West Bengal, coming especially in the run up the state assembly polls. The party said these proclamations do not consider the number of projects shelved over the years and all the funding that was choked by the Centre.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated West Bengal Rs 6,636 crore in this year's annual budget which she read out in Parliament on February 1.
This, according to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, was the highest ever funds earmarked for the state in the history of Indian Railways. "It is 2.5 times the average amount allocated between Budget 2009-2014 and 26 per cent more than last year," he told reporters on Thursday and also tweeted about it a day earlier.
"I would like to assure people of West Bengal that there will be no shortage of funds at all for any project in West Bengal if land is available and local issues are resolved," he tweeted.
The Trinamool, however, isn't taking it at face value. In a tweet that listed out the ways in which the state was deprived of funds and its projects put into the deep freezer, Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien said, "In election season, BJP's tourist gang are touting 'record Railway allocation' for Bengal."
He cited examples of over a dozen projects launched for West Bengal by Mamata Banerjee when she was Railway Minister which have received only "token financial allocation" this year.
Pointing to Budget 2020, Mr O'Brien's tweet said, "The Centre decided to shelve 20 new connectivity ventures and 10 upgradation projects launched by Mamata Banerjee as Minister of Railway, especially in rural Bengal."
Accusing the BJP of focusing on a state only when its assembly polls approach, the Parliamentarian said that from 2016-17 to 2020-21, no new lines were announced in South-Eastern Railways, let alone Bengal. He sourced his information from budgetary documents.