CM Mamata Banerjee slams Union Budget as ‘garbage of lies’, says Bengal gets nothing

KOLKATA: "It's a Humpty Dumpty Budget," CM Mamata Banerjee said on Sunday, adding that the "jugglery of words" and the "sound and fury" in the Union Budget speech could not hide the fact that Bengal received nothing.

"Funds and subsidies for education have declined. There is a decline in subsidies for social security and fertilisers. The economy is totally derailed. The Budget reflects incompetence and is a garbage of lies," the CM told reporters at the Kolkata airport before leaving for New Delhi, adding that the share markets had tanked after the Budget.




"For Bengal, they have given nothing. The freight corridor from Dankuni that was mentioned was originally mentioned by me in the 2009 Railway Budget. It was there that I had mentioned Dankuni and Amritsar. It has been pending for more than 15 years," the CM said, adding, "Nothing happened after I left the rail ministry. Be it the anti-collision device or the freight corridors, I cleared all the projects."

"It (the Budget) is directionless, visionless, missionless and actionless. It is anti-poor, anti-youth, anti-women and anti-farmer. It is anti-SC, -ST and -OBC," she said further.

"They have not given a single penny to Bengal. There is only one tax now. The central govt is taking away our money through GST. While they are collecting tax from Bengal, they are not releasing our developmental funds of more than Rs 2 lakh crore. They don't have the moral authority to run the govt," she added.

Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, speaking to reporters in the Parliament Complex said, "From BJP's perspective, they know they will lose Bengal lock, stock and barrel, which is why they deliberately chose not to allocate funds to the state."

"In her 5,100-second speech, the Union finance minister did not mention Bengal even once. Ten crore people of Bengal were branded Bangladeshis by the Prime Minister and the home minister of this country. For the people of Bengal — workers, farmers, fishermen and the youth — there is nothing in this Budget," added Abhishek, who is also Trinamool's Lok Sabha leader.

Amit Mitra, the principal chief advisor to CM, questioned the allocation for education. "In 2015-16, spending on education was 3.8% of total expenditure. In this Budget, it was reduced to 2.6%. Instead of spending more, expenditure on education has gone down. The central govt doesn't care about education," he said.

"The reduction in fertiliser subsidy indicates that the central govt is least concerned about farmers. In 2015-16, the subsidy accounted for 4% of total expenditure. Today, it has fallen to just 3.2% as per Budget estimate. Instead of increasing the subsidy, it has gone down," he added. He further said that Budget allocations for the welfare of STs, SCs, OBCs and minorities have gone down.