West Bengal to get Rs 16,000cr over 3 yrs

Jun 13, 2012 - MANISH ANAND |

New Delhi

Tags:

With a financial package of Rs 16,000 crore, to be released in four phases over three years, hammered out for West Bengal, Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee will meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday.

West Bengal is expected to get liberal financial allocations under various Central schemes to enable it to speed up development activity.

But after granting West Bengal this bonanza, the Centre could face a tricky situation, as similar demands will certainly be made by several Opposition-ruled states, including Bihar and Orissa.

Some weeks back Tamil Nadu chief minister J. Jayalalithaa had asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ‘under what constitutional provision were West Bengal’s demands being considered?’

Banerjee, who met Samajwadi chief Mulayam Singh Yadav soon after reaching New Delhi Tuesday evening, is believed to have talked about special packages for their states after discussing the presidential poll. UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav had recently demanded a package similar to that sought by West Bengal.

A senior Trinamul leader and UPA minister confirmed to this newspaper: “We have come to know West Bengal will get Rs 16,000 crore in four phases spread over three years. This will be cleared at a Cabinet meeting.”

West Bengal got Rs 8,750 crore last year under the special Backward Region Grants Fund. The state government had sought a moratorium on interest payments, while claiming the state had over Rs 2 lakh crore in debt, which incl-udes a large chunk from small savings borrowings.

The state recently got approval for a slew of proposals under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna to the tune of Rs 2,000 crores, and additional NREGS allocations despite not spending Rs 1,000 crores allocated last year.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/160529" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-a9842c13d4b229d17d819efb8de24f71" value="form-a9842c13d4b229d17d819efb8de24f71" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="89209753" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>