On 11th September, Journalist Rajdeep Sardesai made a serious allegation against the Narendra Modi government, accusing it of approving major infrastructure projects for electoral benefit. Referring to a Railway doubling project and an Expressway project going through Bihar, in a post on 𝕏, Sardesai alleged that the project has been approved just before the state’s assembly elections.
Notably, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs yesterday approved two major infrastructure projects totalling 7,616 crore. One is doubling of Bhagalpur – Dumka – Rampurhat single railway line section in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal totalling 177 km with total cost of 3,169 Crore, and the other is 4-lane greenfield access-controlled 82.4 km Mokama-Munger section of the Buxar-Bhagalpur High-Speed Corridor in Bihar with an outlay of 4447.38 Crore. As mentioned, the railway track doubling project goes through 3 states including Bihar, while the access-controlled highway project lies within Bihar.
Alleging that both projects have been approved only due to upcoming Bihar assembly elections, Rajdeep Sardesai posed 5 questions – why are mega projects for states unveiled only at election time, is there any rigorous audit on how the money is actually spent, are the rules different for Centre and opposition ruled states, what would happen if we had one nation, one election, is it fair to say that one party’s freebies/ ‘revadi’ is another party’s welfare/development bonanza.
Rajdeep Sardesai has...
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