Centre has sanctioned Rs 70,000 cr for West Bengal: State FM Swapan Dasgupta

Kolkata: West Bengal Finance Minister Swapan Dasgupta said on Tuesday that the Central government has sanctioned Rs 70,000 crore for the development of West Bengal, in a bid to address the "50 years of development deficit" in the state.

The state finance minister was addressing the 'Viksit Bengal Conclave' in Siliguri, organized by The Delhi Council of The Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He said that “the financial support has come from the Centre for recovering the development deficit which resulted due to Centre-state non-alignment.”


Dasgupta commented that the new government has a North Bengal bias, and that bias is intentional to address the neglect that the region has seen during the last 50 years.

Bengal Tourism and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Shankar Ghosh, addressing the Viksit Bengal Summit by BCC&I in Siliguri, spoke about the initiatives for the rapid development of the eight North Bengal districts.

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Ghosh said that his target is to take Bengal tourism to global standards. Referring to his recent meeting with the Central Tourism Minister, he said that under the "One State, One Global Destination" project of the Tourism Ministry, West Bengal would get two destinations.

“One is Darjeeling and the second one would be either Mandarmani or the Sundarbans,” he said.

He also said that this year the Tourism Department will showcase Durga Puja across the globe. A live telecast of the Puja will be broadcast in multiple countries.

Industrialist Harshvardhan Neotia praised the new government's measures towards transforming Bengal's potential into performance and said that industry only needs policy-related support from the government.

Investments worth Rs 1,000 crore were announced by Techno, JIS, Mittal Group, Aditya Group, and Jai Balaji.