Union Budget 2019: Piyush Goyal lauds UDAN success, reiterates govt's focus on connectivity in North East

Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday utilised his budget speech  to draw attention to the success of the UDAN regional air connectivity scheme of the Narendra Modi-government and insist that the government has the North East in mind. “Because of the UDAN scheme, today an ordinary citizen is also travelling by air. The number of operational airports has crossed 100 with the commissioning of the Pakyong airport in Sikkim,” he said. [caption id=“attachment_5260071” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the inauguration ceremony of Pakyong Airport in Sikkim. Twitter/@narendramodi[/caption] Goyal also added that domestic passenger traffic has “doubled” during the last five years, leading to the creation of a large number of jobs. “Today, India is the fastest highway developer in the world with 27 km of highways built each day. Projects stuck for decades like the Eastern Peripheral Highway around Delhi or the Bogibeel rail-cum-road bridge in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh have been completed,” he said. On 27 May, 2018, Modi inaugurated India’s first “smart and green highway”, the Eastern Peripheral Expressway, built at a cost of Rs 11,000 crore. On 25 December 2018, he opened the Bogibeel Bridge, India’s longest rail-cum-road bridge, which connects the north and south banks of the turbulent Brahmaputra in the eastern parts of Assam. Goyal also promised an increase of navigation capacity of the Brahmaputra. “The flagship programme of Sagarmala along the coastal areas of the country will develop ports for faster handling of import and export cargo. For the first time, container freight movement has started on inland waterways from Kolkata to Varanasi,” said Goyal. Besides, the mention of the Bogibeel bridge, the speech also highlighted Modi government’s contributions to ensuring connectivity and development in the North East, a region which has seen severe protests over the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill brought by the government and passed by the Lok Sabha in January. Ten political parties of the region unanimously decided to oppose the Bill on 29 January. “The people of North East have also received significant benefits of infrastructure development. Arunachal Pradesh came on the air map recently and Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram have come on India’s rail map for the first time,” Goyal said. He proposed that allocation to the North East be increased by 21 percent over the 2018-19 budget estimate, to Rs 58,166 crore in 2019-20 budget estimate. Follow LIVE updates on Budget 2019 here