Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Tuesday dismissed Amit Shah’s claims about lack of development in West Bengal and provided a list of the state’s achievements in the last decade.
During his recent tour to West Bengal, Home Minister Shah had said, “Bengal had a chunk of 1/3rd of India’s entire GDP when India got independence. Today, it has reduced to minimalistic levels after three decades of Communist rule and 1 decade of TMC rule. Bengal’s per-person income was nearly double of Maharashtra’s in 1960. Today, it is not even half of India’s business capital! Who’s responsible for this?”
“Bengal stands on 20th in industrial growth out of 32 in India and its CAGR stands just 5.74% today. The growth rate in service sector in 5.8% and it stands on 28th. FDI in Bengal continues to stand at just 1% from 2011 till date. There’s no space to fall below! TMC govt can count that as an achievement. TMC is a family party worrying only for its nephew,” he added.
Dismissing Shah’s claims, veteran TMC leader Saugata Roy claimed that during their tenure in power, Bengal’s GDP had grown by 53 per cent, the highest by any Indian state during that time period.
Talking about per capita income, Roy pointed out that with Rupees 115,748 per capita GDP, West Bengal fared much better than some BJP-ruled states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
He said under the TMC regime, West Bengal stood fifth in terms of overall industry growth in the Indian states.
The Dum Dum MP reflected on West Bengal’s achievement of constructing 1,118 km of rural roads. He also said that under the Mamata Banerjee-led administration’s flagship ‘Krishak Bondhu’ scheme, farmers are paid Rupees 5000 per acre every year.
Roy also boasted about the Bengal government’s achievement of increasing the highest number of hospital beds during the COVID-19 pandemic. He claimed that the number of nurses in hospitals rose by 51 per cent.
Earlier, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had also rubbished Amit Shah’s claims alleged that he was misrepresenting his own governement’s information.
“Amit Shah has spoken garbage of lies yesterday. He claimed our state is ‘zero’ in industry but we’re number one in MSME sector. He claimed we couldn’t build rural roads but we’re number one in that. This is Govt of India’s information,” she said.