“He kept ₹35,000 crore for Covid-19 vaccines. When [the] second wave hit, he allocated funds slowly…We asked for ₹3 crore, [but] he didn't give and gave us ₹2 crore in six months”, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo was quoted as saying by press agency ANI.
Banerjee further claimed that the funds provided to the West Bengal government by the Centre is a smaller amount than the particular budget allocated. She said that within the 2020-21 Union Budget, devolution of Central taxes for West Bengal was ₹58,962.55 crore, but the “actual devolution received was ₹44,737.1 crore”, thereby claiming that there was a discount of ₹14,225.54 crore within the actual allocated funds.
The West Bengal chief minister said that an equivalent reduction was noted in 2019-20 Union Budget allocation, too. “Similarly, in 2019-2020, [the] state didn't receive a devolution amount of ₹11,000 crore”, Banerjee added.
She stated that the state will receive an impressive amount of ₹33,314 crore from the Centre within the sort of centrally sponsored schemes. “We are bereft of about ₹60,000 crore”, Banerjee said.
The TMC chief also spoke on the increasing petrol and diesel prices across India, saying that the ruling dispensation at the Centre earned ₹3.71 lakh crore through increased fuel prices from the people. “Don’t you think that Narendra Modi is cutting the pockets of the folk and filling his own pockets?” she told ANI.
Notably, petrol prices within the capital surpassed the ₹100-per-litre mark after the newest hike.
Her remarks come on each day the Union cabinet is undergoing a huge reshuffle, with prominent names like health minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and minister for environment, forest and global climate change Prakash Javadekar among those that resigned.
