The West Bengal Women and Child Empowerment minister Dr Sashi Panja on Sunday lashed out at the Centre saying a dozen railway projects for West Bengal were initiated by Mamata Banerjee when she was the Railway minister, but the BJP government has made meagre monetary allocation for these projects.
She said: “You know the Railway Budget is not released separately now. No action has been taken to implement the 2020 Vision Document of our chief minister. SPV was introduced in 2015 for rail projects where states also have to pay a share of the project cost. What will happen to states like Punjab and West Bengal which are deprived by the Centre?”
“Until 2015, the Centre used to fund 100 per cent for every railway project until this new process called SPV has been introduced over the past few years. What does it entail? The state has to pay 50 pet cent and the Railways 50 per cent.” Citing some examples to explain how the central government is depriving West Bengal, she said in Budget 2021, over a dozen rail factories across Bengal, initiated by Mamata Banerjee when she was the Railway minister, have received only a token financial allocation.
The new rail coach manufacturing unit at Kanchrapara had been allocated Rs 74 lakh in the last Budget, but this year the allocation has drastically been reduced. According to her the coach remodelling unit at Tikiapara has been allocated just Rs 5 lakh and the 15-coach repairing centre at Ranaghat and the 12-coach centre at Bandel have not received a single rupee.
The AC overhauling unit at Liluah has received Rs 1 crore.
The Kanchrapara track machine overhauling depot got Rs 3.5 crore in last year’s Budget allocation. But the amount this year is just Rs 1.25 crore.
The electric loco shed maintenance unit at Santragachhi received Rs 1.35 crore last year. But in this year’s Budget no fund was allocated. Panja said the wagon workshop at Kharagpur had received Rs 2 crore last year but nothing in this Budget. The minister said: “For 157 km of only one new railway line (from Chota Udaipur in Gujarat to Dhar in Madhya Pradesh), the government has allocated nearly Rs 560 crore from 2017-18 to 2021-22.