Kolkata, Feb 1 A dedicated freight corridor and a high-speed railway corridor are two important takeaways for West Bengal from the budget proposals for the financial year 2026-27 that were presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament earlier in the day.
The Union Finance Minister announced in her budget speech in Parliament that seven high-speed rail corridors will be built across the country. One of them will connect West Bengal. The high-speed rail corridor will connect Prime Minister Narendra Modi's constituency, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, with Siliguri in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal.
The list of seven high-speed rail corridors includes Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, and Varanasi-Siliguri. According to the Union Finance Minister, the major economic hubs, Information Technology hubs, infrastructure clusters, and developing cities will be connected through these seven rail corridors.
On the other hand, a dedicated freight corridor will connect Dankuni in the Hooghly district of West Bengal with Surat in Gujarat, the home state of Narendra Modi, where he was the Chief Minister for a long time before becoming the country’s Prime Minister.
However, the West Bengal Chief Minister had claimed that the dedicated freight corridor connecting Dankuni with Surat is not a new proposal.
“In 2009, when I was the railways minister, I proposed this in my railway budget speech. But the work on this proposal did not progress much. In reality, there is nothing for West Bengal in this budget. Actually, the BJP is assured of its defeat in the forthcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal later this year, and hence our state has been totally neglected in the budget proposals,” Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told media persons before leaving for New Delhi.
Trinamool Congress’ general secretary and party’s Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee also accused the Union finance minister of totally ignoring West Bengal in her budget speech.
“The Union Finance Minister spoke for one hour and 25 minutes. In her entire speech, West Bengal was not mentioned even once. This budget also did not mention youth, farmers, or employment. This budget is faceless, baseless, and visionless,” said Abhishek Banerjee.
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