Maximum rail projects for Bengal during Mamata rule

During the past three years, Railways sanctioned the maximum number of projects to Eastern Railway which mostly covers the state of West Bengal, the Lok Sabha was today informed.
Rail infrastructure projects including new line, gauge conversion and doubling were sanctioned during 2010-11, 2011- 12 and 2012-13 to Eastern Zone consisting of four divisions of Howrah, Sealdah, Asansol and Malda in West Bengal.
Incidentally, Trinamool Congress leaders Mamata Banerjee, Dinesh Trivedi and Mukul Roy were Railway ministers during this three-year period, during which 135 projects were sanctioned.
While zones of Southern, East Coast, Western and West Central got only five projects each, North Central and North Eastern received two projects each in this period.

Besides, Northern Zone and South Eastern got 16 and 13 projects respectively.
There were 347 ongoing new line, gauge conversion and doubling projects as on April, 2012.

Ongoing projects will be completed in coming years depending upon availability of resources, said Minister of State for Railways K J Surya Prakash Reddy.
His reply comes in the backdrop of reports that Minister of State for Railways Adhir Ranjan Choudhury is planning to present the status report about the Bengal projects announced during the TMC regime in Rail Bhavan.
Reddy said efforts are made to generate extra budgetary financing through state participation, PPP, defence funding, declaring some projects as national projects, revival of capital fund and implementation of bankable projects through Rail Vikas Nigam Limited to expedite completion of ongoing projects.