Budget 2026 Doles Out Infra, Rail, and Tourism Sops

New Delhi: As West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam get ready for high-stake Assembly elections, the Union Budget 2026-27 silently trained its focus on the poll-bound states, doling out several infrastructure proposals, including the rare earth corridor, dedicated freight passage and the proposed high-speed rail networks, besides Central support for agriculture.Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her ninth Union Budget in a row draped in a magenta-coloured Kattam Kanchipuram saree, which is traditionally woven in the Kanchipuram region of Tamil Nadu. The poll-going state received budgetary allocation in railways, critical minerals and manufacturing sectors.Tamil Nadu is part of the rare earth minerals corridors along with Odisha, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh. Several high-speed corridors have been proposed, which will also pass through the southern state which is dominated by Dravidian political players.The Union Budget also mentions the development of bird-watching trails along the Pulikat Lake and the archaeological site of Adichanallur into vibrant and cultural destinations. An ecologically sustainable mountain trail will be developed in Podhigai Malai in the Western Ghats, straddling the border of Tamil Nadu and Kerala.Ms Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, said that in order to promote environmentally sustainable passenger systems, “We will develop seven high-speed rail corridors between cities as growth connectors. Hyderabad-Chennai and Chennai-Bengaluru would be among them.”For West Bengal, a new dedicated freight corridor linking Dankuni in Hooghly district to Surat in Gujarat, an integrated East Coast Industrial Corridor with a major node at Durgapur and tourism-focused interventions under the Centre’s Purvodaya vision have been proposed in the Union Budget.The Budget also proposed the creation of tourism destinations across five “Purvodaya” states and provisions for 4,000 e-buses, announcements that the BJP believes can be leveraged in a state where employment, urban mobility and regional imbalance have become major electoral talking points. The timing, however, has not gone unnoticed.While stopping short of announcing a special financial package for West Bengal, the infrastructure-heavy focus in the Budget is seen as the BJP’s pre-election development roadmap in the state ruled by the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government for nearly 15 years.In the northeastern state of Assam, the Union Budget promised the development of Buddhist circuits and the upgrade of the National Mental Health Institute in Tezpur as a regional apex institute. The Union Budget has promised SHE-Marts (self-help marts) and `2-lakh crore under the special assistance to states for capital investment. The Budget also proposed a major push for trauma and emergency care centres and promotion of tourism destinations in the region. Besides the rare earth mineral corridor, poll-bound Kerala has been promised several infrastructure projects, including turtle trails along prominent sites in the coastal areas and promotion of inland waterways and promotion of coastal cargo. The state, along with Tamil Nadu, will also gain from the Central support for high-value agricultural productions like cocoa, coconut and cashew.



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