The budgetary allocations for railway projects in West Bengal for the financial year 2023-24 stood at Rs 11,970 crore, railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav said on Friday.
Following the minister’s announcement, various divisions of the railways published budgetary allocations that they received.
Two ongoing Metro projects in Kolkata have received higher proposed outlays than they did last year. The proposed outlay for the New Garia-Airport corridor for 2023-24 is Rs 1,200 crore, according to Metro Railway officials. The outlay in the previous budget was Rs 350 crore.
A truncated stretch of the corridor, between New Garia and Hemanta Mukherjee (Ruby) stations, was inspected by the commissioner of railway safety (CRS) on January 30. A nod from the CRS, mandatory for the start of commercial runs, is still awaited.
The proposed outlay for the Joka-Esplanade corridor, operational between Joka and Taratala since January 2, is Rs 1,350 crore, compared to Rs 350 crore in the previous budget, said Metro officials.
The East-West corridor, which will connect Howrah Maidan and Salt Lake Sector V once fully operational, has received a proposed budgetary outlay of Rs 500 crore, compared to Rs 1,100 crore for 2022-23. By the end of a financial year, Metro projects often get more funds than what had been allotted in the budget.
At the end of the last fiscal, the revised grants for these Metro projects were much more than their proposed budgetary allocations.
“The allocation of additional funds in the same fiscal year is linked to the progress of a project,” said a railway official.
Officials of the Kolkata Metro Rail Corporation, the implementing agency of the East-West corridor — now operational between Sector V and Sealdah — said the grant had been reduced because the project was nearing completion.
“The budgetary outlay is good enough. But if more money is needed, we can always raise a revised estimate. Funds have never been a problem for the project. We want to ready the corridor by the end of this year,” said Angsuman Sarkar, director, finance, of the KMRC.
The Noapara-Barasat corridor has got a proposed outlay of Rs 620 crore, compared to Rs 506 crore last fiscal. The target for the completion of the stretch between Noapara and Airport is October 2023, said a Metro official.
The Baranagar-Barrackpore corridor — stuck for a long time over multiple logjams — has got a proposed outlay of Rs 50 crore, compared to Rs 10 crore last fiscal.
The proposed allocation for Eastern Railway and South Eastern Railway is Rs 4,078.88 crore and Rs 8,671.16 crore, respectively, both higher than the funds received last year.
On Friday, Vaishnav announced the renovation of 93 railway stations in Bengal.