The Bengal government has decided to spend around ₹1,157 crore for widening and strengthening 350km of state highways and urban roads across the state over the next few months.

The spending spree, multiple sources said, has been planned keeping the 2026 Assembly polls in mind.

A source in Nabanna said that this is the first time since the 2021 Assembly polls that the government is allotting such a “huge sum” for the purpose of urban roads.

The state spent heavily on rural roads over the past couple of years, especially after the Centre stopped the release of funds under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), citing irregularities in its implementation.

“But urban roads were being neglected so far, with only some patchwork carried out over the past five years or so. This is the first time since the 2021 Assembly polls the state would be spending heavily on state highways and urban roads,” said a senior state government official.

According to a memo issued last week, the superintending engineers of the public works department (PWD) posted in different circles were sent a list of 36 roads — mainly urban and state highways — with an instruction to undertake required work to invite tenders for the strengthening and widening work.

The strengthening and widening work would be undertaken on certain stretches of roads like Budge Budge Trunk Road in South 24-Parganas, Calcutta-Basanti Road, Jessore Road between the RG Kar Hospital and the airport, Barrackpore-Basanti road and Barasat-Basirhat road.

“A total of 350.24km of roads would be upgraded by widening and strengthening. A sum of ₹1,157.41 crore would be spent for the entire initiative…. The tenders would soon be floated and all the work would be completed by end-2025,” said a senior official.

A bureaucrat said that the amount could be termed huge given that the state could not do much on urban roads over the past few years due to the funds crisis.

“The expenditure on state highways and urban roads came to a halt since the state started the Lakshmir Bhandar scheme launched for 1.22 crore women after the 2021 Assembly polls. Now, the state spends more than ₹70,000 crore on various welfare schemes every year. This is why the road projects had taken a backseat in the past few years,” he added.

But as the polls are approaching and the roads in the urban areas have been deteriorating, the government has decided to spend heavily on roads.

“These roads connect the urban centres by touching rural areas in between…. So, these projects would benefit all,” said a senior government official while explaining that the projects were not planned keeping the rural populace in mind only.

However, a section of the officials said grievances over urban roads were growing in a large part of the state as these were not maintained properly over the past few years.

Sources said that the road condition of the urban areas started deteriorating after the Covid-19 pandemic as the
state had to undertake an austerity drive to cut down
expenditure.

“As the ruling party would not like to take a chance ahead of the polls, it had to arrange the amount to repair the urban roads,” said an official.

Another official said that the TMC had performed poorly in the urban areas in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, with the BJP taking the lead in about 60 per cent of the 125 urban bodies across the state. Many in the ruling party pointed out that poor road conditions in the urban areas could be one of the major reasons behind the poor show of the ruling party.

“This is another reason why the ruling establishment allotted money to repair urban roads in an apparent effort to woo them ahead of the Assembly polls scheduled next year,” said a source.