Budget 2021: Bengal, Maharashtra And UP Rail Allocations Witness Significant Rise

With the highest ever total Plan expenditure in the rail sector, allocations for many states including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal among others have also gone up significantly in the 2021-22 budget.

Uttar Pradesh has got a maximum allocation of Rs 12,696 crore in the 2021-22 budget as compared to Rs 8576 crore in 2020-21, followed by Madhya Pradesh, whose share has increased from Rs 6509 crore to Rs 7700 crore.

The rise in allocation for Uttarakhand is also maximum as the state has been given Rs 4432 crore as against Rs 1780 crore last year.

All poll-bound states like West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu have also been allocated increased funds to carry out rail projects in their respective states.

The budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has earmarked Rs 6636 crore for West Bengal as against Rs 5246 crore in the last budget.

In 2019-20, the state was given Rs 5033 crore.

Tamil Nadu's share has been increased from Rs 2812 crore in the last fiscal to Rs 2972 crore for the 2021-22 fiscal.

Another southern state, Kerala, which is also going to polls, got Rs 871 crore this year as against Rs 688 crore last year.

Maharashtra, which has the maximum rail users for its massive local train network, received Rs 7107 crore this year.

Last year, the state was allocated Rs 6572 crore.

Bihar's share has seen a rise from Rs 4489 crore in the last fiscal to Rs 5150 crore this year.

Since the North East is the focus state for the NDA government, the region's rail expenditure allocation has gone up from Rs 4669 crore to Rs 6913 crore in the budget.

The share of Odisha, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab have also witnessed a considerable increase from the last fiscal.

Allocation for Odisha has gone up from Rs 4884 crore in the last fiscal to Rs 5528 crore this year, while Rajasthan has got Rs 4986 crore as against Rs 4582 crore in 2020-21.

Andhra Pradesh has also got a considerable increase with Rs 5812 crore allocation against last year's allocation of Rs 4910 crore.

Punjab, which witnessed large-scale disruption of rail operations due to the farmer stir last year got Rs 2262 crore. It had got Rs 1515 crore in the last budget.

However, States like Chhattisgarh, Telangana and Karnataka have received less allocations than last year.

Karnataka got Rs 3897 crore this year as against Rs 3932 crore last year, while Chhattisgarh's share was dipped from Rs 3845 crore to Rs 3650 crore this year and Telangana's share was reduced to Rs 2420 crore from Rs 2602 crore last year.

Delhi also witnessed a fall in the allocation with Rs 310 crore allocation as against Rs 312 crore last year.

The capex of Rs 2,15,058 crore this fiscal for the Railways was the highest,
which was an increase of 34 per cent compared to the capex announced for the last fiscal.

The total capex for 2020-21 was Rs 1.61 lakh crore.

The operating ratio of the Indian Railways is expected to improve by the end of the current financial year to 96.96 per cent, despite the disruption caused by Covid-19.

The operating ratio is pegged at 96.15 per cent for FY21.