Repackaged Budget sops for Bengal irk state players: 'Humpty Dumpty Budget'

For poll-bound West Bengal, the Union Budget 2026 came as a big disappointment, with two of the three schemes announced for the state on Sunday (February 1) being merely repackaged. Both the state's ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the Congress, one of the Opposition parties, criticised the financial document with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee even going to the extent of ridiculing it as "Humpty Dumpty Budget".

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Earlier in her presentation, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed a dedicated 1,850-kilometre (km)-long freight corridor connecting Dankuni in southern Bengal with Surat in Gujarat to support logistics and freight movement.

Suresh Prabhu's promise repackaged?

Incidentally, former railway minister Suresh Prabhu had proposed in the 2016–17 Railway Budget a roughly 2,000-km rail corridor from Dankuni to Palghar in Maharashtra in a bid to link major industrial centres across Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

In effect, Sitharaman’s new announcement merely extends the already proposed corridor by about 150 km north of Palghar, with no change whatsoever in the Bengal segment.

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Similarly, the proposed high-speed train corridor between Siliguri in northern Bengal and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is merely a change of route.

In 2021, the railways ministry had proposed to lay a high-speed rail corridor between Varanasi and Howrah, which connects Kolkata, railway sources revealed.

Accordingly, Consortium of Tila Consultants and Contractors Private Limited and Monarch Surveyors and Engineering Consultants Pvt. Ltd. received a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) from the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) for the preparation of a Detailed Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and Resettlement Action Plan (RAP) for the proposed 760 km Varanasi-Howrah High-Speed Rail Corridor.

The new announcement merely means, the corridor will now, instead of connecting Howrah, link Siliguri, a region the Bharatiya Janata Party constantly alleges has been neglected by the TMC government.

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The Union finance minister, in her budget speech, further made the following announcement related to Bengal: “I propose the development of an integrated East Coast Industrial Corridor with a well-connected node at Durgapur.”

Durgapur is already included in the Bengal government’s ongoing industrial corridor initiatives, which extend from Dankuni to Asansol and cover areas such as Durgapur, Bankura, and Purulia, which are located in the southern and south-western parts of the state.

It is not clear from the budget speech how the Centre’s new initiative would differ from, or whether it would simply complement, the state government’s existing plan.

Exclusion from rare-earth corridor

Another big letdown for Bengal came in its exclusion from the dedicated rare-earth corridors despite the Geological Survey of India recently identifying significant reserves of rare earth elements (REEs) in the state’s Purulia district.

Recent explorations in the Kalapathar-Raghudih block of the district have uncovered approximately 0.67 million tonnes of REE deposits with an average grade of 0.19 per cent, positioning the region as an emerging hub for critical minerals in India.

Congress reacts

“For Bengal, this budget can best be termed as old wine in a new bottle as two so-called major announcements for the states are merely reformulation of announced or envisaged projects,” said Bengal Congress spokesperson Chandan Ghosh Chowdury.

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He was referring to the two corridors announced in the budget for the state.

The Congress spokesperson further criticised the budget for excluding Purulia from provisions aimed at promoting and exploring rare earth minerals.

The TMC expectedly tried to make political use of this disappointment, terming the budget step-motherly attitude for Bengal.

Mamata calls budget 'directionless, visionless'

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee reacted to the budget and borrowed a popular nursery rhyme to target the Centre, calling Sitharaman's document a "Humpty Dumpty Budget". She indirectly referred to the "great fall" that the Indian markets witnessed after the budget was tabled. Alleging that the Centre did not give Bengal a single paisa, the leader called the financial plan “directionless, visionless and anti-people”.

Speaking to reporters at Kolkata airport before leaving for New Delhi, the TMC supremo said, “This budget is directionless, visionless, actionless and anti-people. It is also anti-women, anti-farmer, anti-education and against the SC, ST and OBC... There is nothing on offer for Bengal in the budget.”

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“In Bengal, they are losing, so the BJP, with its step-motherly attitude, is trying to teach the people of Bengal a lesson. But in a democracy, it works the other way around. In the coming polls, the people will give a befitting reply to the BJP,” TMC National General-Secretary and MP Abishek Banerjee said in his post-budget reaction.