The Union budget has allocated ₹13,955 crore for railway projects in
Bengal, railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday.

The amount is three times the allocation for the state when Mamata Banerjee helmed the railways, Vaishnaw added.

The Trinamool Congress had slammed this year’s budget, which they said had deprived Bengal.

“The honourable Prime Minister has undertaken a mission to modernise and expand the railway network
in Bengal, to build new stations, improve passenger amenities and run new trains. As a result, an allocation of ₹13,955 crore has been made for Bengal. The state currently has ₹68,000 crores of investment in railways. The allocation for Bengal made by Modiji is three times
that made during Mamata Didi’s time,” Vaishnaw told a news conference in New
Delhi.

He did not give a clear break-up of the allocation for individual projects.

Later, railway officials shared a report on the budget allocation for Bengal. It said the allocation for the state in the 2009-2014 period was ₹4,380 crore.

Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister from 2009 to 2011. She resigned to become the chief minister of Bengal and Dinesh Trivedi, MP from Trinamool Congress, succeeded her. Trivedi was succeeded by Mukul Roy, also from Trinamool.

On Monday, Vaishnaw also sought the chief minister’s help in land acquisition for railway projects.

“I would like to request the honourable chief minister of the state to address land acquisition and law and order issues so that the benefits of these investments and projects reach citizens at the earliest. Land acquisition is very important in railway projects,” Vaishnaw said.

Land logjams have delayed several railway projects in Bengal. The Metro projects in and around Calcutta are among them.

Calls and messages to Manoj Pant, Bengal’s chief secretary, for a response to the railway minister’s appeal, went unanswered.

“The minister informed that 101 stations in West Bengal are being modernised under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme and around 1,290km of tracks were added in the state in the last 10 years. Moreover, the Kolkata Metro built 28km of tracks from 1972 to 2014, while an expansion of 31km has been achieved in the last 10 years,” said a PIB release issued later in the day.