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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee teared into the Union Budget 2026-27 shortly after Nirmala Sitharaman finished her record-breaking ninth consecutive presentation on Sunday. Despite the Finance Minister’s proposal for a high-speed rail link between Varanasi and Siliguri and a massive freight corridor connecting Dankuni to Surat, Banerjee dismissed the announcements as "blatant lies" and "garbage."

 

The Chief Minister’s main grievance remains the persistent standoff over central funds. She accused the Centre of hijacking state initiatives, claiming that West Bengal has already kickstarted six corridors of its own — including a ₹72,000 crore investment in Purulia’s "Jangal Sundari" project — without a "single paisa" from Delhi. She also took a sharp swipe at the GST regime, arguing that the Centre is simply taking the state's money and trying to sell it back to them as a gift. "They want to destroy the economic and constitutional structure of this country," she told reporters, asserting that the government has lost its "moral authority" to lead.

 

Outside Parliament, TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee was equally scathing, noting that during the 5,001-second budget speech, the word "Bengal" was effectively ghosted. He labeled the document a "visionless self-appraisal report" written by a PR department, rather than a serious economic plan. "The Centre looks at Bengal as if it is Bangladesh," he alleged, criticising the lack of concrete plans for job creation or income stability despite the government's buzzword-heavy focus on AI and technology.

 

The timing of these proposals — specifically the connectivity projects for Siliguri and Dankuni — is particularly loaded given that West Bengal is heading into Assembly elections later this year. While the Finance Minister framed these as "growth connectors" for a sustainable future, the TMC leadership is clearly framing them as empty pre-election rhetoric from a government that has otherwise left the state's coffers dry.

 

Also read: Amit Shah eyes 45 pc votes in WB 2026 polls, slams TMC