Poll-bound West Bengal got a few infrastructural projects in the latest budget tabled by Union Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1. However, many political pundits believe the announcement was not at par with pre-budget expectations when compared to Bihar in 2025. The Union budget allocated a bounty to Bengal’s poll-bound neighbour that year.
While a section of political personalities and experts point out that the development underlines a backhanded acceptance by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that it may be difficult to dislodge the incumbent Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in the state in the forthcoming election, others argue that the Bihar and Bengal situations are not comparable.
“Bengal virtually got nothing in the budget. Even the freight corridor from Dankuni was mentioned in my rail budget in 2009. BJP knows they are going to lose the next election in Bengal. Hence no major support was provided for Bengal in the budget,” said Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while on her way to Delhi on February 1.
Member of Legislative Assembly and economist Ashok Lahiri countered, pointing out that a national budget cannot be presented to appease a state.
“While Lahiri is right, the question crops up: what happened in the case of Bihar when the state was given a special package over Rs 58,000 crore before the last assembly election?” argued an independent expert, pointing out that while infrastructural developments are extremely important, they normally take a long time to materialise and depend on a range of factors.
In tune with the overall thrust on infrastructural development in the Union budget 2026-27, Sitharaman announced three new major infra projects in West Bengal, apart from continuing to support a few ongoing projects.
The new projects include a new East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), between Dankuni in Hooghly district and Surat, the textile hub of Gujarat, “to promote environmentally sustainable movement of cargo”. The project plans to improve goods movement across India, especially between industrial areas in western India and the east.
BJP officials claim that the proposed project will bring investment, create job opportunities and give a fillip to their election prospects in and around Dankuni, close to Singur where the abandoned Tata project was scheduled to come up. At present, India has two operational DFCs: one from Ludhiana to Dankuni, and the other from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port near Mumbai.
Independent experts termed this project as most important among the three announced. That is because following the political turmoil in Bangladesh, India is focusing on the growth of its textile industry. Several parts of southern Bengal, particularly weaving nodes in Hooghly, Nadia, and Purba Bardhaman as well as Howrah and Kolkata, can benefit from the project.
Sitharaman also announced plans to build seven high-speed rail corridors connecting major Indian cities. “ ... In order to promote an environmentally sustainable passenger system, we will develop seven high-speed rail corridors between cities as growth connectors,” said the minister. The corridors include one from Siliguri to Varanasi.
“The newly proposed corridor will be a boon to the overall development of north Bengal and Northeast India, as Siliguri has long been known as the entry point to the Northeast. It will significantly push tourism, trade and overall employment in the area,” said a BJP leader from the area.
“It’s like showcasing a new plate without any food. The budget has not said anything on key issues like rejuvenation of tea gardens in north Bengal that are a lifeline for many. Moreover, north Bengal did not get any support under the announcement of new trekking routes or bird tourism though it has immense possibilities on those issues,” countered a local TMC leader.
The budget also proposed the development of an Integrated East Coast Industrial Corridor, featuring a key, well-connected industrial node at Durgapur. This project is planned to boost manufacturing, logistics, and employment in the region under the ‘Purvodaya’ vision for eastern India.
“Bidhan Chandra Roy, West Bengal’s first chief minister, had earmarked the area for industrial development. Durgapur is very important because of its strategic location for industries,” Lahiri said. While BJP leaders hailed the project as a “growth opportunity” and claimed it would make Durgapur a futuristic city, the TMC claimed it was another announcement to garner votes. “Prime Minister Modi laid the foundation stone, inaugurated, and announced projects worth over Rs 5,400 crore in Durgapur last August. Is the project announced by the finance minister re-packaging the same one or a new one?” asked one. “Unless a specific announcement is made regarding the steps to be taken for development of Durgapur-Asansole area as an industrial corridor, it is difficult to comment on the budgetary announcement,” said Kabi Dutta, the chairman of Asansol-Durgapur Development Authority.
Budgetary allocation was also reduced in two of three major metro routes in Kolkata. The budgetary allotment for most other on-going projects including Farakka barrage renovation remained more or less the same compared to the last financial year.
Abhishek Banerjee, TMC general secretary and Loksabha MP, alleged that the word ‘Bengal’ was not uttered a single time by Sitharaman in her nearly one-and-a-half-hour budgetary speech. He added that state has been deprived of its rightful budgetary share. Mahua Moitra, the firebrand TMC leader, called the finance minister ‘smart’, pointing out that she did not invest in Bengal as she knows her party does not stand any chance in the next Assembly election.
Sabyaschi Roy Choudhury, an academic and political analyst, said the budget could be considered a back-handed admission by the BJP that they do not stand much of a chance to win in the forthcoming polls. “Apart from a much low scale of investment, also look at the areas where they have not invested which could have given them headways in the election, be it the tea industry in north Bengal or metro rails in Kolkata,” added the academic.
“It will not be prudent to link the budgetary announcement with election prospects taking Bihar as a benchmark. Bihar was a much critical, and an almost make-or-break situation for Modi and the BJP had to get a windfall in that state. But after a spate of electoral wins, the BJP is now much more settled and does not feel the need for the same model here. More so, because increased investment is hardly expected to influence the party’s Bengal election prospects significantly, with identity and dole politics ruling the roost here,” observed Biswanath Chakrabarty, another academic and political commentator.
Nilanjan Ghosh, an economist and head of the think tank ORF Kolkata, also sought to delink budgetary announcements with electoral results. “The announcements made are critical in context to the development of the state. But I am unsure how they are going to influence the political discourse in West Bengal,” said the expert.
“The budget, and the announcements, are proof enough that BJP, all said and done, is in a setting mode with the ruling party here and plans to give back the state in a platter to the TMC. Clearly, they have made no real efforts to dethrone TMC in the next election through budgetary announcements,” observed Mohammed Salim, state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in West Bengal, told this correspondent.