New Delhi: In a break from recent years, the union budget 2026 does not include a special focus on poll-bound states despite the fact that assembly elections are scheduled in five states and Union territories including West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Puducherry.This despite the Bharatiya Janata Party not being in government in any of the states that is going to the polls this year, except Assam, and has been looking to make inroads in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Unlike previous years, the budget also did not include any clear political optics.In 2025, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman offered relief measures for the middle class by slashing income tax slabs. She brought a special focus on Bihar, where assembly elections were due, and proposed a Makhana board, a food processing institute, a greenfield airport near Patna and financial support to a canal project for a flood-prone region in the state.The TMC and the DMK which have governments in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively have now questioned the Narendra Modi government’s decision to not make any mention of the poll-bound states.West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said that there was nothing for Bengal in the finance minister’s 85-minute speech, and said that in the upcoming assembly elections, the BJP knows “they will lose Bengal lock, stock and barrel, which is why they deliberately chose not to allocate funds to the state.”“Ten crore people of Bengal are being branded as Bangladeshis by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister of the country. For the people of Bengal – the workers, farmers, fishermen, and the youth, there is nothing in the budget,” she said.DMK MP Kanimozhi also criticised the budget for not mentioning Tamil Nadu.“Even elections couldn’t persuade the Union BJP government to remember Tamil Nadu in this budget,” she said.In July 2024, soon after Modi formed his third successive government, Sitharaman’s budget announced an outlay of Rs 15,000 crore for the development of Amravati, Andhra Pradesh’s proposed capital city. The budget had also committed to financing the much-delayed Polavaram irrigation project in Andhra Pradesh, also one of Modi’s key allies, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu’s prestige issues.The budget this year did not make any direct, state-specific financial outlays exclusively for Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal or Assam.In the 2026 union budget, Sitharaman made only passing references to poll-bound states of Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal.“The government will support high-value crops such as coconut, sandalwood, cocoa, and cashew in the coastal areas; other trees in the Northeast; and nuts such as almonds, walnuts, and pine nuts in hilly regions,” said Sitharaman.While the move is expected to benefit Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the minister also proposed coconut promotion scheme.The budget also promised seven high speed rail corridors including Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, Varanasi-Siliguri, with two of these corridors touching Chennai and one Siliguri in West Bengal.In another reference to Bengal, an integrated East Coast Industrial Corridor with a well-connected node at Durgapur, creation of five tourism destinations in the five Purvodaya states, and the provision of 4,000 e-buses has also been proposed.