Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday assured West Bengal government after a brief meeting with Trinamool Congress MPs that the Center would do everything within "the realms of possibility and constitutional limitations" to bail out the debt-ridden state.
However, the Center is unlikely to meet the deadline of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Early this month, Mamata dashed off a 15-day deadline to the Center for granting an interest moratorium for the cash-starved West Bengal government.
Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy, who had a 15-minute meeting with the Prime Minister at Parliament House, told reporters, "The state is on the edge of a precipice. Its financial condition is very bad and the state government is facing grave difficulty."
"The Prime Minister told us that within the realms of possibility and constitutional limitations, the Centre will do everything possible for West Bengal," Roy added.
A group of Trinamool Congress leaders met the Finance Minster a day before meeting Manmohan Singh and placed the same demands.
In a meeting with FM Pranab Mukherjee, the TMC representatives demanded various financial aids from the Central government in order to fix the crippled West Bengal's financial market, which even included restructuring of the "massive debt burden" endured by the state.
However, the Central government ruled out the possibility of carrying on the state's debt restructuring demand any time soon. Manmohan Singh said that the Centre can only consider these demands after the ongoing budget session.
Roy said that West Bengal's total debt last year was around Rs 183,000 crore of which about Rs 18,000 was paid by the state as interest and Rs 7,000 crore as loan repayment and indicted the previous Left regime for the financial mess in the state.
Further Roy added that the content of the meeting with Manmohan Singh would be communicated to Mamata Banerjee.
