Hitting out at the Government for a massive hike in rail fare, the Opposition parties led by Congress sought an immediate roll back of what it termed as the “biggest hike in history”.
Criticising the BJP, Congress General Secretary and head of its media department Ajay Maken said the “gift” by the Modi Government is putting an additional burden on the shoulders of the middle class, lower middle class and the poor. He also referred to Modi’s tweet on March 7, 2012 against UPA’s Government’s hike in Railway fares.
Maken quoted a portion of the letter Modi had written to the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ‘The decision also reflects huge communication gap between the Ministries of Railway, Energy, Coal and Environment. This is despite the Prime Minister constituting a high-level committee for coordination’”.
“I want to ask if this lack of coordination that he wrote about is still thereIJ While in Opposition, he said something else and now in power he is doing the opposite,” Maken said.
Two former Railway Ministers Nitish Kumar and lalu Prasad criticised the Government for promoting a “bad tradition” of announcing hike before presentation of Railway budget in Parliament. “They are promising the country that ‘Achche din aa gaye hain’ (good days have come) and promoting bad tradition,” said Kumar, who served as Railway Minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA Government.
lalu, who was the Railway Minister in the Congress-led UPA-I Government, lashed out at the NDA Government describing the hike as the “first salvo on common man”.“The BJP befooled people in the general election by promising Achche din...They have fired the first salvo from a tank) on common man’s chest by announcing a big increase in rail fare and freight,” lalu said.
“I do not remember any Government in the past had announced such a big increase in Railway fare and freight in one go,” he said even as he sought to take credit for decreasing the rail fare every year during his tenure as minister in the UPA-I.
Rajya Sabha MP and spokesman of Trinamool Congress, which led the Ministery in the UPA Government, Derek O’Brien wondered: “Is this a super rail budget before the rail budgetIJ”Strongly opposing the hike, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, too, urged the Prime Minister to roll back the increase in the interests of the poor and the middle class people.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said this would further aggravate inflation while CPI (M) Politburo said that the increase in rail tariff was a cruel blow to people who have been fighting the price hikes in years of “Congress misrule”. His Kerala counterpart, Oommen Chandy said it is the beginning of many severe measures of the NDA Government.
JD(U) said that when the budget session is about to commence in the first week of July, such kind of announcements should be considered as “disrespect” to Parliament. Party spokesperson KC Tyagi said that the hike in public transport will straight away impact prices of cement, steel, food grains, fruits and vegetables and others which will hit the common man.
CPI(M) leader VS Achuthanandan termed the hike as a “challenge” to the people and said it would adversely affect Kerala as major food items come by rail from neighbouring states. He charged the BJP Government at the Centre with following the same policies of previous UPA Government.