AGARTALA, Feb 14 (TIWN): Eventhough, the Union finance minister Arun Jaitley didn’t announce any specific scheme or projects for the north-east in his budget speech but the mood in the region was positive overall.

States in the region would likely to get a total of Rs 43,285 crores in 2017-18 and there’s hope that of the 3,500 km of new railway lines commissioned for the coming financial year a sizeable part would be constructed in the region.  Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal terming the budget as ‘historic’ said that the target for agricultural credit in 2017-18 at Rs 10 lakh crores adding “special efforts” will be taken to ensure adequate flow of credit.

Reportedly, the union government has proposed broad-gauge connectivity to all state capitals in the north-east by 2020 and conversion of entire rail network to broad-gauge in the 2017-18 budget.