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Calcutta, Feb. 8: The first tranche of the Rs 8,750-crore package under the Backward Regions Grant Fund (BRGF), which has been at the centre of the ongoing verbal duel between allies Congress and Trinamul, reached the state coffers today.
Bengal received Rs 1,046 crore for a water-supply project in Bankura, to be implemented by the public health engineering department. The money was released by the Centre yesterday, two months after it was approved by the Union cabinet, on December 7.
“We will undertake a pipeline-based water-supply project in Bankura with the money,” public health engineering minister Subrata Mukherjee said today, two days after finance minister Amit Mitra said the state was yet to receive “one farthing, one paisa” under the BRGF package.
Since Sunday, the package has been pivotal in the argument between Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Mitra on whether the Centre has financially assisted the cash-strapped state.
The amount that arrived today is the first instalment of the Rs 8,756-crore grant announced in August last year and approved by the Union cabinet four months later.
On December 24, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had announced that the Planning Commission had approved projects — under the BRGF package — worth Rs 2,000 crore to upgrade healthcare facilities in Bengal.
“A sum of Rs 610 crore was supposed to be released by the Centre in this financial year under that head. It was expected that the Centre would release funds for the health projects first and other funds would follow. But that didn’t happen,” an official said.
State government officials said around Rs 1,600 crore more under the BRGF head was expected to be released by the end of this month.
Although the central fund reached Bengal, the Congress spokesperson released a statement through state party president Pradip Bhattacharya, slamming the finance minister for a “deliberate attempt to understate and suppress central assistance” to the state.
“I had talked about allocation/approvals, not disbursals…. Dr Mitra, Finance Minister, WB, attacked the statement as untrue, doubted my ability to understand economics and deliberately chose to speak of disbursals instead of allocation,” Singhvi said.
With the statement, Singhvi attached figures from the Union finance ministry to demonstrate the “complete error” in Mitra’s statements by showing how Rs 23,695.64 crore had been released by the Centre between May 20 last year, when the Trinamul-led government came to power, and Monday.
“All I can say to my good friend Dr. Mitra is that facts remain sacred, whether you are an economist or a lawyer, whether in public life or in chambers of commerce. Nor should politics change them,” Singhvi, a lawyer, said.
Although Mitra was not available for comment, Writers’ sources said he would first consult Mamata.
Senior bureaucrats, however, contested Singhvi’s claim by pointing out one “basic flaw” in his argument.
“He has given details of funds released under Finance Commission grants, share of central taxes and central schemes such as the NREGA. The state is entitled to such funds anyway,” an official said.
He explained how Mitra and the chief minister, while complaining of “deprivation” by the Centre, had been seeking a “special” bailout package for the debt-stressed state or a three-year moratorium on interest payment and principal repayment on loans in view of the Rs 2.03 lakh crore debt burden.
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