KOLKATA: Ahead of assembly election, Mamata Banerjee government has increased the allocation for the minority affairs department to woo the minority voters in the state. The Minority affairs department has seen a five fold increase in its allocation during the tenure of Mamata Banerjee. The state plan expenditure of the department has increased from Rs 1031.39 crore during 2006-11 to Rs 5358.94 crore during 2011-16. Significantly, 2006-2011 was the last term of the Left Front government before Mamata Banerjee assumed office in 2011.TMC government has allocated Rs 2500 crore to this department for the next financial year. Delivering his budget speech, state finance minister Amit Mitra said that the government has already included 97 % of the state's Muslim population in the OBC quota. Moreover, reservation for OBC in higher education and government jobs are available to them.The budget speech has a clear indication of a comparison drawn between the first five years of Mamata Banerjee government and the last five years of the Left Front government."The number of students receiving scholarship has increased by nearly 10 times from 8,58,219 during 2007-11 to more than 84 lakh during last four years. This is likely to cross 1 crore by the end of this financial year. The amount of scholarship distributed has also increased from Rs 171.47 crores to Rs 1450 crores during the same period," said Amit Mitra in the legislative assembly today.