Railway budget can't be state-specific: Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury

NEW DELHI: With the Trinamool Congress calling the UPA's railway budget anti-Bengal and anti-Trinamool, Congress MP from the state and minister of state for railways Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury threw his weight behind Pawan Kumar Bansal and defended the budget presented by the latter.
Chowdhury on Tuesday refuted charges that his home state West Bengal has been sidetracked in getting any new projects this time."It was a railway budget for Bengal in the last three years, but the railway budget is meant for the entire country and not just for any specific states," Chowdhury said, when asked whether he considered this budget is anti-Bengal.
According to Chowdhury, the charge that the budget is anti-Bengal is not true as it has "allotted Rs 100 crore for the East-West Metro project and sanctioned funds for a survey for a Metro rail line from Howrah Maidan to Dankuni and Dankuni to Srirampur." He added that a railway factory in Behrampore, which is a part of Chowdhury's constituency, has also been sanctioned.
Hitting out at the Mamata Banerjee-led government, Chowdhury said: "Other states like Karnataka and Rajasthan are ready with land for new projects. In contrast, projects in Bengal cannot take off because of unavailability of land. The state government does not even help by shifting a pipeline to facilitate projects that have already been sanctioned."