An Eastern Railway official said, “The cumulative revenue saving would be approximately Rupees 40 crore by the next 25 years,”
Kolkata: Union Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal on Thursday hit out at the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government for not allowing important central government schemes to be implemented in the state, thus depriving the people of having the benefits.
Goyal said that earlier the CPI and the CPI(M) had partnered with the Congress at the Centre and Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) was also part of Congress-led UPA government, but West Bengal got little benefits.
He said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed that projects of any state will be completed on priority if land and other requisites are made available,”.
“We want to give more projects to West Bengal, but the state government is not allowing us,”.
Piyush Goyal holds the significant commerce portfolio in the Modi cabinet, said 8.88 lakh farmers across India received the benefits of the Prime Minister Kisan (PMK) Yojana, but no one from West Bengal got those due to the refusal by the Mamata Banerjee government. “In the Ayushman Bharat program, around one crore people have got the benefits, but people of West Bengal were deprived of it,”.
Goyal said the Modi government had brought in a wave of development in India with its motto: “sabka sath, sabka vikas, sabka viswas”.
He added that PM had, said in 2014 the wholesome development of the country could only happen if the eastern parts developed.
“Earlier, the west and the south developed but not the east,” and people from Bihar and West Bengal went to all parts of the country for work said, Goyal.
The people of the eastern parts of India had not got an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of development before Modi became PM, Goyal said, that the focus of the Union government was on developing these parts of India.
Goyal flagged off an inter-city express between Balurghat and Kolkata through remote control on a lighter note said it might have been a coincidence that the number of the train matched with his date of birth.
“As the number of the train is 13064, my date of birth is June 13, 1964,” he said.
He dedicated to the country 140 km of railway electrification project in the Katwa-Azimganj and Monigram-Nalhati sections of the Howrah and Malda divisions.
The commissioning of the new railway electrification project at a cost of approximately Rs 219 crore, covering the Katwa-Azimganj and Monigram-Nalhati sections, will help ensure seamless electric train operations on different routes of the Eastern Railway and reducing diesel consumption substantially.
Goyal said, “Around 83 percent route kilometers of the Eastern Railway were electrified now and the remaining work was in progress so as to achieve 100 percent electrification by 2021,”.
He also dedicated to India “a 3-MW rooftop solar power plant at the Howrah station, which was inducted without incurring any capital expenditure by the Indian Railways.”
An Eastern Railway official said, “The cumulative revenue saving would be approximately Rupees 40 crore by the next 25 years,”.
He also inaugurated from the Sector 5 station 41.13 km of double/third line over the Howrah, Malda and Sealdah divisions of the Eastern Railway, which was completed at a cost of approximately Rupees 550 crore.
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