Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday allocated Rs 25,000 crore to develop 675km of highways in Bengal, the lowest allotment among the four poll-bound states.
Sitharaman allotted Rs 1.03 lakh crore for 3,500km roads in Tamil Nadu, Rs 65,000 crore for 1,100km in Kerala and Rs 34,000 crore for Assam’s 1,300km.
Senior state government officials said they were surprised at the announcement.
“Even if the Centre is trying to develop the state’s road network to serve its political purpose, it should have allotted more funds to Bengal,” said a senior government official, adding that the Centre could have considered their many representations to the transport ministry for road development funds “before allotting the lowest amount among four states”.
Sources said funds had been allotted to develop 675km roads in the state that includes the Calcutta-Siliguri stretch. The NH12, which links Kakdwip in South 24-Parganas and Dalkhola in North Dinajpur, is 625km long. “Expansion of NH12 (formerly NH34) is on. So, it can be assumed that a big part of the funds will be invested on the 130km stretch of the existing NH27 that links Dalkhola and Siliguri,” said an official.
According to PWD engineers, the cost of repairing and developing the 130km stretch of NH27 would come to around Rs 10,000 crore. “So, only some Rs 15,000 crore will be left to develop state highways, which should have been the Centre’s prime focus if it wanted to develop road connectivity,” said a senior government official.
Bengal has some 4,000km of state highways, of which some 1,000km are 10-metre (two-lane) wide. The rest are narrower, and a bottleneck in road connectivity.
The Mamata Banerjee government had floated tenders inviting private partners to widen state highways, said a source. As private firms kept away, the state repeatedly urged the Centre to allot funds to take up widening jobs on its own. “With the funds, a maximum of 400km of state highways can be widened,” the source said.
A National Highways Authority of India official said Bengal’s biggest problem was lack of land for road projects, which possibly made the Centre wary about allotting funds.
Another NHAI official said as projects didn’t get completed in Bengal on time, original project cost got increased in the state often.
“The widening of NH-12 had started in 2009 and after 12 years the project could not be completed yet due to the state government’s hands-off land policy. The project cost has now almost gone up by 300 per cent in the past 12 years,” the official added.
