The Congress on Sunday demanded the resignation of Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw over the Odisha rail tragedy and attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he should accept part of the responsibility for creating an “all is well” facade even as the critical infrastructure of the Indian Railway “languishes in neglect”.
The Opposition party asked whether the prime minister will take responsibility for the “deadliest rail tragedy” of this century. It also asked who is responsible for ignoring the warnings and suggestions of experts, the parliamentary committee and CAG report.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge alleged that Modi was busy flagging off trains while not paying attention to railway safety. He called for fixing accountability of all posts from top to bottom to prevent such incidents in future.
Former Congress president Rahul Gandhi too slammed the government and said the prime minister should immediately seek the resignation of the railway minister.
“No accountability even after 270 plus deaths! The Modi government cannot run away from taking responsibility for such a painful accident,” he said in a tweet in Hindi.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here, Congress MP Shaktisinh Gohil and AICC’s publicity and media department head Pawan Khera alleged that the Odisha rail tragedy was a “man-made devastation caused by “utter negligence, serious lapses in the system, incompetence, and a narcissistic sense of know-it-all attitude of the Modi government”.
Khera said the prime minister has a “Kavach” which no other PM had, protecting him from public scrutiny and television debates. He urged the media to not provide that shield to the PM.
“This ‘Kavach’ does not save rail passengers but only your (PM’s) image,” Khera said.
The Opposition party also said that Modi should accept part of the responsibility for the “mess” that it alleged that his government has inflicted on the Indian Railways and the people.
Prime Minister Modi, who has announced that the guilty would be punished, must first start with his railway minister, Khera said.
“Unequivocally and unambiguously, we demand the resignation of the Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. Nothing short of it,” he said.
“Resignation means taking responsibility on moral grounds, here there is neither responsibility nor morals, do you think any resignation would come? We don’t know whom we should ask for resignation. “The person who goes to inaugurate even small stations or the one who has been busy since yesterday morning in publicity. Modi ji, you decide whose resignation you want. But now the nation expects that you seek the resignation of your rail minister the way Lal Bahadur Shastri, Nitish Kumar and Madhavrao Scindia resigned,” Khera said.
“‘Praan jaye par PR na jaye-- you have to leave this principle now,” Khera said further.
In a series of tweets in Hindi, Kharge posed questions to the Modi government and alleged that “PR gimmicks” have made the working system of the dispensation “hollow”.
Noting that three lakh posts are vacant in the Railways, he said posts at high levels whose recruitment is through the Prime Minister’s Office are also lying vacant. He asked why these posts were not filled in the last nine years.
The Railway Board itself has recently admitted that long working hours of loco pilots due to acute shortage of manpower is the main reason for the increasing number of accidents, the Congress president said and asked why the posts were not filled up.
Kharge claimed that the Principal Chief Operating Manager of South Western Railway Zone sought fixing of the signalling system on February 8, 2023, citing an incident in Mysore in which two trains averted a collision.
