West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee is poised to kick off one of the state’s most extensive infrastructure programmes today, coinciding with the conclusion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls ahead of the assembly elections. With the SIR exercise ending, election officials are racing to finalise updates and purge inaccurate entries before the draft voters’ list is published. West Bengal has digitised data for nearly all of its 7.64 crore voters, flagging hundreds of thousands of transferred, missing, and duplicate entries that require correction.
From the state secretariat at Nabanna, Mamata will remotely inaugurate a new phase of the Pathashree and Rastashree infrastructure schemes, rolling out construction on roughly 20,000 kilometres of roads across the state. This latest push includes around 9,114 rural road projects under the Panchayat department covering more than 15,000 kilometres, and an urban component of 11,365 roads extending over 5,000 kilometres under the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA) jurisdiction.
The combined programme represents one of the largest road-building efforts in recent years, with a total of 20,479 new routes scheduled for development at an estimated cost nearing ₹22,000 crore. Urban works are slated to begin in January, while rural segments aim to enhance connectivity to markets, schools, healthcare facilities, and other essential services in hinterland areas. Officials say the timing of the launch — tied closely to the electorate’s updated rolls — reflects a strategic push by the government to accelerate visible development ahead of voters deciding the state’s political trajectory.
